THE HEART OF GASPE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 



THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 





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THE HEART OF GASPE 



SKETCHES IN THE GULF OF 
ST. LAWRENCE 



BY 
JOHN MASON CLARKE 



WITH M.\XY ILLUSTRATIONS 



5s'rm fork 
THE MAC:\IILLAN COMPANY 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, igi3, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1913. 



Aa50433 



INTRODUCTION 

It is my hope that the kindly people of the 
Gaspe Coast, to whom these sketches come and 
who will be first to detect their inadequacy, may 
not be indisposed at this attempt to picture some 
aspects of their country. Where settlements are 
so venerable it may seem a somewhat intrusive 
enthusiasm that regards this ancient coast a theme 
for special discourse, but I have approached Gaspe 
less with a tourist's eye than with a mind absorbed 
by some of its scientific problems. The effort to 
solve the latter has awakened a lively appreciation 
of its other attractions and a geologist's interest 
in the rocks of the country has served to sharpen 
my apperceptions of the rest. To other readers I 
may say that there may be some excuse for these 
untechnical sketches in the fact that really very 
little has been written of this inviting country, 
save in the way of statistical reports or unpoetical 
inducements to colonization. 



vi INTRODUCTION 

In the presence of the venerable settlements of 
Gaspe, the scion of modern towns must feel a 
proper deference, the decent outcome of respect 
for a long, if uneventful, past. Life has gone 
slowly on this ancient coast, not with the leaps 
and bounds of newer invasions, and in a world so 
solely abandoned to the purpose to arrive, the 
conservative is unusual enough to,be fascinating; 
it is like the anchor which enables the ship to ride 
out the onrush of the waves; the steamer's sail 
which serves to steady its progress; it is the rotund 
and comfortable mother fortifying and transmit- 
ting all that is best in the past of the race. So 
much of the old mode survives, there is still a 
flavor of the ancient regime. 

If amongst my readers there are any unfamiliar 
with this coast let me give a proper location for 
these observations. 

Gaspe is that vast peninsula of Eastern Quebec 
which lies between the broad mouth of the St. 
Lawrence river and the Bay of Chaleur, facing 
the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It is the 
Gasp6 Peninsula, more trippingly termed in the 



INTRODUCTION vii 

French, Gaspesie and sometimes in the English, 
Gaspesia, charmingly corrupted by the habitant to 
Gaspesy. Properly, Gaspe is Gaspe County, 
which, with Bonaventure County at the south, 
divides most of the great peninsula. It is Gaspe 
County which here concerns us most, which carries 
the most striking contrasts of coast and moun- 
tain, where the timbered wilderness still prevails 
except along a narrow belt of shore; it is far from 
the world's thoroughfares even though this day, 
after years of suspended hopes, a railroad has in- 
vaded its solitudes, bringing its inviting sceneries 
nearer. 

Gaspe County in size might be a king's realm. 
It is larger than the State of ^lassachusetts or 
the ffingdom of Saxony, but it may never carry a 
greatly larger population than is now represented 
in the scattered \dllages along its coasts. It is no 
regret to the lover of its genuine attractions that 
official invitations to colonization seem to have 
borne but little fruit, or that the tourist has not 
yet brushed the bloom off it. 

Geographically, it is a great headland projecting 



viii INTRODUCTION 

into the Gulf, deeply indented for a length of 
sixteen miles by Gaspe Bay, which divides it 
unfairly, leaving only the slender peninsula of 
Little Gaspe, or the Forillon, between it and the 
St. Lawrence river. Its front is broadly incut 
by the Malbay, but from there southward to the 
Bay of Chaleur, its southern boundary, the coast 
is undivided. 

Gaspe County, even though now enriched by a 
railroad, has for its chief land thoroughfare the 
highway winding along the shore between the 
mountains and the water, or over and along the 
mountain slopes. From this are short branches 
leading to back concessions or up the large rivers, 
but even the coast road is not very old and men 
now venerable have told me of their part in the 
building of it. 

I do not know how many thousand people are 
living and trying to live in the great county, but 
not many. Census reports are always accessible, 
but they make no record of the fact that though 
all told there are barely enough to make a small 
city yet these are unfailingly kind, courteous and 



INTRODUCTION ix 

hospitable. The population seems to increase, in 
spite of all govermental inducements, only by the 
time-honored method. Large families prevail and 
flourish on the scanty livings which sea and soil 
afford to the often much bestead struggler for 
existence. The fish, the lumber and the chilly 
farms are the sources from which happiness and 
contentment are here derived. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction v 

The Scenery of the Gulf Coast, I . , , .1 
The Scenery of the Gulf Coast, II . . . .20 

The Scenery of the Gulf Coast, III . . . .39 

The Shore of the Great River ..... 46 

The Perce Mountains ...... 66 

The Rocks and the People ...... 79 

Bona venture Island .... . . 88 

The Early Settlements ..... 108 

French Seigniories and English Patents . . . 135 

General Wolfe in Gaspe 142 

The Wreck of the Jacques Cartier .... 159 
Historical Sketch of the Cod-fisheries of Gaspe . 169 
The FoRiLLON and the Fate of John Simonds . . 193 

The Magdalen Islands 207 

The Place Names 259 

Glossary of Place Names 273 

The Lighthouses an-d Light Signals of Gaspe County 290 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Perc6 Rock. Foreshortened view . . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Map of Gaspe 1 

View of Grande Greve 8 

View of Indian Cove 8 

Arch in Perce Rock 28 

Perce Rock. Copy of old print 30 

Perce Rock from the north 37 

Gaspe Basin 41 

Cap-des-Rosiers 52 

Fox River 58 

Mt. Ste Anne . .68 

Perce Mountains 68 

View of Perce Village from the south . . . .75 

Bonaventure Island 94 

Spread of fish at Perce 98 

Trou-aux-Margots, Bonaventure Island . . . .98 
The Golden Jugs of Bonaventure Island . . , 104 

Old print of General Wolfe's house at Peninsula . . 148 

Cartier CUffs 163 

Cartier Medallion 163 

View of Splitting Tables . . . . . .174 

A Catch of Cod 174 

Spread of Fish on the C. R. C. beach at Perc6 . . 184 

The Chart of Magdalen Islands 209 

The Demoiselles of Entry Island 216 

xiii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING PAGE 

An Island Home, with demoiselle topography . .218 

An Outside Cellar, Entry Island 218 

View of Amherst Island 222 

View of Grosse Isle ....... 222 

View of Grosse Isle 226 

View of Alright Island ....... 226 

The Great Bird Rock ...... 254 

The Ledges of the Ile-aux-Margots .... 254 

Gannets Nesting on the Bird Rock .... 256 

Briinnich Murres and Kittiwakes on the Bird Rock 

256 



THE HEART OF GASPE 



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MAP OF THE EASTERN SHORE OF GASPfe 



THE HEART OF GASPE 

THE SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 
I 

The Ocean's Work; at Perce; on the Forillon — Destruction of 
the Forillon — The Forillon Sinking — The American Bank 
— Scenery of the Forillon — Mt. St. Alban — The King's 
Road — Origin of the word Forillon — Hognedo or Honguedo 
— View from the Forillon — Shiphead — Origin of the word 
Gaspe — The End of the Appalachian System — Date of the 
Forillon — Little Gaspe 

Through whatever eyes it be viewed, the hap- 
piest equipment for the true appreciation of 
scenery is a combination of the geologist and the 
artist. There must be something of each in every 
real devotee of nature. To the artist's eye, deli- 
cacy of coloring, refinements of light and shade, 
exactitude of perspective and boldness of contrast, 
all quickly apprehended, arouse an intellectual 
enthusiasm so long as the picture lasts. I am 
audaciously disposed to put the geologist's appre- 



2 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

elation of scenery on a different and higher plane. 
His eye is not bhnded, though it may be less keen 
to the passing contrasts in the unceasing play of 
refraction and reflection, but these transitory 
embellishments of the scene dawn upon him gradu- 
ally, because, seeing first the topographic forms 
and seeking their causes, his appreciation begins 
only when these causes have fully revealed them- 
selves. This will not be at the first glance at 
an unfamiliar landscape, but more often than 
not comes only after long and laborious re- 
search. 

At Perc6, the most dramatic spot on the Gasp6 
coast, where brush and pen both falter, where 
jagged cliffs, insulated rock, somber headlands 
and grassy slopes encircle the consecrated moun- 
tain of Ste Anne, and almost every shade of the 
spectrum bends its rays to the eye, an artist 
strolled in five and twenty years ago, schooled 
and practised. During all these years, the ever 
changing colors over the changeless forms so im- 
bued his being that no other can hope to appreciate 
as he the panorama there displayed, or to sound 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 3 

the depths of his spiritual deHght in it.* But to 
the geologist the brilliant cliffs do not assault the 
sky in vain. The great Pierced Rock is not merely 
a glorious mass of soft reds and yellows and greens, 
nor Ste Anne only an uplifted blood-red altar 
mantled with deathless verdure of spruce and fir. 
They are all these and more, for apart from their 
aesthetic beauties and beneath their brilliant ex- 
teriors are the secrets of their origin and the keys 
which unlock many a serious problem in the mak- 
ing of the earth. 

The scenery of Gasp6, rather than its history, 
first invites us, as it is the more insinuating, the 
more venerable and to the traveler the more 
immediate. Gaspesian scenery lends itself most 
readily to either scientific or sentimental treat- 
ment. I may be detected in indulging in the latter, 
but I trust not at the expense of fidelity to the 
former. 

* This is a reference to Mr. Frederick James whose greatly 
lamented death has occurred since this page was written. 
With attributes of artistic genius were combined in Mr. James 
an attractive personality, broad culture and large human 
sympathy. 



4 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

The scenery of Gaspe County has a natural 
basis of diversity. The eye recognizes the pro- 
found differences at once, even though unconscious 
of their causes. The whole country is underlain 
by a series of great troughs and folds of the rocks 
running almost parallel to each other and to the 
shores of Gaspe Bay, and these rock folds project 
at the shore hne in the majestic and ragged cliffs 
which form the striking and brilliant features of 
the coast. Whitehead, the torn cliffs of Perce, the 
threatening reefs of St. Peter, the bold walls of 
Shiphead, Bon Ami and St. Alban. Beneath these 
folds, and forming the foundation on which they 
rest, are the vertical and distorted strata of much 
more ancient date, that make the low cliffs of 
Cap-des-Rosiers and extend thence eastward in 
majestic walls all along the shore of the lower St. 
Lawrence. Lying almost flat on top of the crests 
of all the folds south of Gaspe Bay, and near the 
coast, is an enormous mantle of brilhant red 
conglomerate and sandstone, rising from the base 
to the highest summits of Perce Mountain. 
Speaking then with precision, these heights of 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 5 

Gaspe divide themselves into the true mountains, 
wherein the rock strata have been folded, and the 
great dissected plateau of Perce Mountain, where 
there has been no crumphng of the strata. Singu- 
larly enough, this plateau is highest of all these 
heights as they now stand on the sea front. In the 
remoter inland south of the St. Lawrence, lie the 
greater mountains of the Shickshocks. 

The outline of the Gaspe coast expresses only 
the present phase of its history. The eternal 
ocean, unceasingly pounding at its edges, has 
gnawed it into its present form. This great mill 
of the gods has slowly ground back to its primal 
mud an enormous body of rock which, not so 
long ago as time is reckoned in geology, was a 
part of the land. One will go far indeed to find 
such magnificent demonstrations of the devouring 
power of the sea. At Perc6 it has cut away Bona- 
venture Island from along the flanks of Mt. Ste 
Anne and the shores of the South Bay, by a chan- 
nel three miles wide, from which remnants of 
the old rock still project above the water; it has 
cut away the Pierced Rock from the headlands 



6 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

of Mt. Joli and Cape Canon, with which it once 
formed a now lost mountain; it has eaten away 
another and greater mountain above the North 
Beach, leaving to the present only the ragged 
Murailles, which formed its southern flanks. 

If one would read in more exact expression the 
ocean's work about these sea cliffs, let the eye fol- 
low the thirty fathom line on our hydrographic 
chart of Little Gasp^ peninsula — the Forillon. 
This little spine of land that runs from Grande 
Greve to Cape Gaspe rises seven hundred feet along 
the sea cliffs and falls sheer to the St. Lawrence on 
the northern side. Yet on the north at the foot of 
this inaccessible escarpment the sea-bottom falls 
away very gradually, and it is full five miles from 
the present coast-line before it reaches a depth 
of one hundred and eighty feet. All this volume 
of rock, represented by the width of five miles 
bounding the coast and a height far greater than a 
thousand feet, has the ocean gnawed away from 
Cape Gasp6 in comparatively recent time. 

But along the shore of Gasp6 Bay, from Grande 
Greve and Indian Cove to the Cape this thirty 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 7 

fathom line shows that off this coast the fall is 
abjectly downward from six and sixteen fathoms 
to thirty-eight, forty and fifty-two fathoms close 
to the present shore. Here the phenomena are 
the counterpart of those on the other shore. So the 
ocean is eating back on both sides of the little 
peninsula, but on the north at a tremendous ad- 
vantage, pounding away against the edges of the 
rocks under the fierce impact of the northeast 
storms. There is little doubt this land is sinking. 
Here and there along the flanks of the peninsula 
can be seen a trace of ancient sea beaches and 
from Indian Cove to Cape Gasp^ is a fine wave 
cut rock terrace high over the present water 
level; records of a former upward movement of 
the land. The late A. W. Dolbel, agent of the 
extensive and venerable fishing establishments of 
the William Truing Company, who was stationed 
on the Gaspe coast for nearly fifty years, has told 
me that twice in his experience it was necessary 
to move further up the beach at the Grande 
Greve, the seaward panel of the drying racks 
for the herring nets, because of the encroach- 



8 THE HEART OF GASPE 

ments of the sea. The beaches at Le Huquet's, 
St. George's and Indian Coves, all along the south 
shore, have grown narrower than in the earlier 
days of the settlement as the southern margin 
of the Forillon goes down. 

Let us look again at the map and follow the 
lines of forty and fifty fathoms. Fifty fathoms 
is less than half the height of the rocks rising 
straight above the water at Shiphead, and yet 
should the water fall away these three hundred 
feet the land would run out into the Gulf, follow- 
ing the direction of the mountain range, until it 
included all the rocky shoals called the ''American 
Bank," once a part of the same range of mountains. 
Even an elevation of the sea bottom for one 
hundred feet would turn the American bank into 
a rocky island of no small dimensions. Such it 
once was. Now wasted by the waters, the home 
of the cod, it leaves only to the imagination the 
scenes of life played out on the grassy slopes dur- 
ing the ages before its destiny was accomplished. 
Like the Lyonesse, it may have had its Armorel in 
the unrecorded and unsubmerged days of its past. 




GRANDE GR^VE. A FISHING STATION ON THE FORILLON 
OF GASPi; BAY 
(Taken by W. Hyman) 




THE SLOPES OF THE FORILLON AT L ANSE-AU-SAUVAGE, NEAR THE 
END OF THE PENINSULA 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 9 

So the little peninsula of the Forillon, survivor 
of a grander past, now barely a half mile across 
at the portage above the Grande Greve, is not 
only going down, but being devoured as it goes. 
But it is too soon to sing its requiem. Majestic 
stands its rib of mountains, the still mighty flank 
of a once mightier range. On its southward 
slopes are planted some of the serenest and most 
contented homes I have known; its farms, often 
pitched at disheartening angles to the water, yield 
their increase, while the crest of spruce and fir 
adds softness and beauty to every contour. One 
may here start at the waters of Gaspe Bay and, 
climbing upward, a short half hour will bring him 
to the cliffs of Bon Ami, seven hundred feet 
straight over the waters of the St. Lawrence. 
Off at his left, above the curve of Rosier Cove, 
towers bare St. Alban, twelve hundred feet, the 
highest point reached by these rocks in their up- 
ward inclination. If he will take the King's 
Road, which traverses the peninsula from Grande 
Greve to Cape Rosier, it will lead him at first 
gently through a way embowered in evergreens 



10 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

and bring him with startling abruptness almost 
to the height of the Bon Ami cliffs. Lying on his 
belly on the grass of the roadside, he may test his 
nerve by protruding his head far enough over the 
to edge see the waves break at the base of the con- 
cave cliff hundreds of feet below him. Mighty 
St. Alban rises again at his left, a gray bare rock 
wall on its sea front, embrasured in a sloping talus 
of its own fragments and resting on the projecting 
point of rock called ''the Quay" at the edge of 
the water. St. Alban seems the very genius of 
the place, a stern, weather-beaten god, skirted in 
his kirtle of fallen rocks, with foot planted for- 
ward on the strand, bidding a vain defiance to 
the waves. I rather suspect that King Knut 
who is popularly known to have been guilty of 
some such impotent defiance to the onrushing 
waves, may have to take his place as a like im- 
posing sea cliff among the geological myths, to- 
gether with Lot's wife, Niobe, and the Chimsera. 
The King's Road, which reaches the summit 
of the cliffs, from this point becomes quite im- 
possible, pitching down at an indescribable angle, 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 11 

but it comes out at last, beyond the line of vision, 

to the broad flat triangle of Cap-des-Rosiers and 

to a wholly different series of rocks which produce 

quite distinct scenic effects. 

Some of the earliest of the French explorers, 

perhaps Champlain, termed this narrow peninsula, 

this spine of land which we have been describing, 

the Forillon.* In some early maps and in the 

Jesuit Relations, the name, often spelled Fourillon, 

is attached only to the cape now called by the 

English, Shiphead. Out at the end of Shiphead 

until 1851 stood an obelisk of rock which the sea 

had separated from the cliff. To this the name 

Forillon was vicariously applied, the name of the 

whole being taken for the part. The obehsk was 

also and still is to the French and Guernseymen, 

La Vieille, the Old Woman, which, says the 

Abbe Ferland, with its tufted cap of verdure, 

* Describing the hills and headland on the south shore of 
Gaspe Bay, Nicholas Denys in his ''Description" (1672) 
says: "Cette pointe se nomme le Forillon, il y a une petite 
Isle devant on les pecheurs de Gasp6 viennent faire leur de- 
grad pour trouver la molue " (p. 234). This use of the name 
is quite at variance with that of earlier writers who applied 
it only to the northern peninsula. 



12 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

resembles some of the Canadian grandmothers. 
Admiral Bayfield put it down on his charts as 
the Flowerpot, and so it stands to-day on English 
maps. Be this as it may, the obelisk is gone. 
La Vieille has long since fallen, and nothing 
remains but the Flowerpot, and we very much 
need for constant use a term for this Gaspe spine 
of land. So I shall call it the Forillon, believing 
that in so doing we return to its original use. 
On Lescarbot's map of 1612 the little peninsula 
bears the name Hognedo, and it would seem that 
he himself was responsible for its application to 
the place. When Cartier returned to this coast, 
in 1535, on his second voyage, bringing back with 
him the two Indian boys whom he had carried 
away from Gaspe the year before, as his ship 
hove in sight of the lofty headland the lads, 
it is said, greeted the home ground with de- 
lighted cries of "Honguedo! Honguedo!" Later 
writers have construed this word either as the 
tribal name of the people, or their equivalent to 
home. 

From the broad fist of Hosiers Cape and Cove, 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 13 

this thin peninsula runs out into the sea hke an 
index finger, as it might say to the traveler 

W^L' Mark well her bulwarks. 
From the homes pitched high on the slopes of 
the Forillon the eye sweeps over a magnificent 
stretch of bay and sea and distant mountains, 
and never tires at the infinitude of variety in the 
scene. The Forillon itself and the hills of Little 
Gaspe are so foreshortened as to be almost lost. 
The observer seems to view the panorama spread 
before him as do the gulls wending their way from 
their roost on the Bon Ami cliffs to their feeding 
grounds in the barachois at Douglastown. The 
whole stretch of Gaspe Bay lies before the eye 
from the hillside galleries. Far away at the west 
are the rounded sandstone mountains of Gaspe 
Basin, besmudged by the smoke clouds from the 
lumber mills that surround it. Here the panorama 
begins, and under the circling eye pass in due 
succession the low cliffs of Douglastown with 
its sandbars, its tickle and barachois lying low 
to the waterline, the long gray rock face of Chien- 



14 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

Blanc, the reddish timbered hills of Bois-Brule, 
and the crimson sea-wall of sandstone running 
on eastward to Point St. Peter, the end of the 
south shore save for the little lighthouse-crowned 
Plateau Island at its tip. Above these lower 
heights of the foreground rise at the east the 
graceful curves of majestic Perc6 Mountain, 
twenty-four miles away as the cormorant flies, 
crowned at the sunomit with the shrine of Ste 
Anne. The good saint often draws her mantle 
of fog about her, but on a fair day from the Forillon 
her cross is an undisguised test of unweakened 
vision. Looking from the higher slopes of the 
Forillon, the Perce Rock slips above the horizon, 
and from Shiphead light at the tip of the Cape 
one sees Bonaventure Island stretched out for 
its full length. Beyond them all the great expanse 
of gulf waters. 

To the portrayal of the sublime and awe- 
inspiring in nature, the vehement which impinges 
on the vision and beats its way through the portals 
of the brain, our language, well-handled, lends 
itself with adequacy, but to paint in words these 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 15 

gentler aspects and her more insinuating moods 
when she addresses herself to the heart and per- 
meates the being of the observer with a delicious 
sensuousness, here, I think, our common vehicle 
falters. The views from the Forillon are not at 
all as I have described them, the gentler embellish- 
ments, their brilliancy of color and freshness of 
life are lacking. Here on the rising slopes of the 
little farms fighting their way upward against 
the spruce and fir, on an August day are carpets 
of coral-red pigeon berries set in emerald nests, 
great clusters of heavy gold-tipped tansy and 
golden rod fill the fence corners, the fallow fields 
are blue with climbing vetch or gleam with rugs 
of crimson Monarda. Banks of white inmaortelles 
are at every hand, while daisy and tall dandelion 
add color to the scheme. From such a bower the 
eye looks down the long slope to the water, dotted 
with the flats and barges of the fishermen, and 
across the water to the distant mountains. With 
every passing cloud the scene is changed. Shadows 
come and go upon the distant summits, deepening 
their azure with an approaching storm, blackening 



16 THE HEART OF GASPE 

as the storm impends and blotting them out as 
it bursts. The oncoming autumn effects httle 
change in the aspect of the evergreen woodlands, 
but there are still patches of hardwood trees where 
autumnal tints are painted in extravagant bril- 
liancy. 

We were speaking of the pernicious activity 
of the sea in the destruction of the Forillon. 
Aided by the northwest storms and frosts, the 
waters will continue to waste its mountains, pare 
down St. Peter, undermine Plateau Island, de- 
molish the walls of Perce, dismember the Pierced 
Rock and efface Bonaventure. The American 
Bank is the handwriting on the wall, its fate is 
the forecast for all the coast. 

For the Forillon, however, the end that is to 

be concerns us less than the end that is, and the 

end of the Forillon is the end of the world, the 

Finistere, for this coast at least.* The double row 

of sloping rock ridges which make the Forillon, 

terminates in a two-lobed point. The southern 
* Father Pacifique, an eminent present authority on the 
Micmac language, says that Gasp6 is a Micmac word that 
means finistere, the land's end. 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 17 

and higher is Shiphead, well named, for as one 
stands on the Hghthouse and looks down on the 
drum-mast and the outline of the cliff edge the 
resemblance to the foredeck and prow of a ship 
is most striking, and from outside the profile is 
even more effective. It is six hundred and ninety 
feet straight down from the grassy edges of the 
cliff to the water. 

The northern lobe of the headland is Cape 
Gaspe, once called the Old Man by those who 
would find a companion for La Vieille. These 
ends of parallel declivities are separated by a low 
coule, a hanging valley whose end lies far above 
the sea. In this coule formerly the light and 
fog-bell stood and the ruins of this older structure 
have afforded many an interesting fossil. 

The road thither from the Grande Greve is a 
series of ups and downs, but the last grand ascent 
brings one to a point of view from which no other 
spot on the coast so profoundly impresses the 
observer with the destructive agency of the sea, 
as he notes the ragged sheer limestone walls 
stretching away toward Cape Bon Ami and Cape- 



18 THE HEART OF GASPE 

des-Rosiers Cove, the barest remnant of what has 
once been a mighty mountain range, reaching 
toward Anticosti Island. As one stands on the 
summit of this weather-beaten promontory let 
him remember that he is at the very outermost 
supramarine tip of the great Appalachian Moun- 
tain system and on the remnant of one of its 
folds which here gave birth to the St. Lawrence 
river. 

It is well to note from the map the singular 
curvature of the axis of this mountain fold, which 
carries into full effect the great S-form of the 
entire mountain system along the coast of North 
America. The making of these mountains did 
not take place all at once, at any one time in the 
history of the continent. Here in Gasp6 some of 
these mountain ridges date back to the close of 
Silurian time, but the rock beds of the Forillon 
were crumpled up into mountains toward the 
close of the Devonian and thrust far over the 
twisted earlier folds that now make the low rock 
shelves of Cape-des-Rosiers while farther south 
at Perc6 the later rocks lie almost flat above them. 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 19 

At Little Gaspe there is an accession to the 
mountain structure, and here we get the first 
glimpse of the great overlying sandstone masses 
which cover a vast area in Gaspe County. Here 
one may see, near the corner of the beach as 
the road turns toward the little English church, 
these sandstones lying on the sloping limestones, 
and from here on up the Bay to Peninsula and 
onward the sandstone masses make the first 
ridge of the series, the two limestone ridges falling 
into the background. These ridges run far up 
the St. Lawrence river and far back into the tim- 
bered wilderness making the northern folds of the 
Gaspe Appalachians. 



II 



The Cliffs of Perce — Perce Rock — Changes in Perce Rock — 
Descriptions by Champlain; LeTac; Denys; Le Clercq — 
Captain Smith's Engraving — Ferland — Le Boutillier — 
The Future of the Rock — Fossils of the Rock; their Abun- 
dance — The Murailles — Mt. Joli and Cape Canon — Rela- 
tions of tlie Limestone Cliffs. 

The ribs of the Forillon are stupendous, remark- 
able in uniformit}^ of development and amazingly 
rich in their profusion of the life forms that peopled 
the ancient seas in which they were laid down, 
but the limestones of Perce surpass them in bold 
and startling picturesqueness. If the traveler 
approaches this wonderful spot by boat from the 
south, in the westering sun, guided by the cross- 
crowned summit of Mt. Ste Anne, hugging the 
shore cliffs of Cape d'Espoir and Cape Blanc, he 
sees nothing of the spectacle which is in store 
for him; but as his boat beats round the head 
of Cape Blanc the stupendous Pierced Rock 
bursts upon his amazed view, towering in majesty 

20 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 21 

and clothed in garb of many colors, while the torn 
limestones of the Murailles, stretching away to 
the north, turn to him their verdure clad slopes. 
Let him come upon the Perce harbor from the 
north and as he rounds Point St. Peter and 
steams across the Malbay, the Perce Rock fixes his 
eye in ever growing majesty. At his right are 
the higher and painted cliffs of the Murailles, 
piercing the sky in ragged lines. If the sun is his 
friend and lies to the east behind him, the vision 
grows to its climax as his boat swings to under 
the beam of the great Rock. But perhaps none 
of these approaches by water is excelled for 
effectiveness by that which greets the traveler 
on the way leading over the high Perce Mountain 
from the Barachois of Malbay. Here as, through 
truly alpine scenery, one reaches the height of 
grade, the isolated rock strikes the eye head on, 
like a gigantic liner rounding the point of Mt. Joli 
and saiUng into the port of the North Beach. 

Perce Rock may be prosaically described as an 
isolated mass of limestone in strata that are almost 
vertical, dipping a little to the south, about 



22 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

fifteen hundred feet long and two hundred and 
eighty-eight feet high at its peak or inner point. 
At its greatest width it is about three hundred 
feet through, its diameter varying greatly along 
the projections and recesses of its sides. At the 
seaward end stands a smaller mass entirely isolated 
and cut away from the parent rock, and the rear 
of the great rock itself is perforated by an arched 
tunnel about sixty feet high. The summit, which 
is now wholly inaccessible, has a gently undulating 
surface and shows all the features of a small 
section of a mountain side. The rock is separated 
from the shore and the low headland of gray 
limestone beginning with Mt. Joli and continuing 
to Cape Canon, by about one hundred yards of 
sandbar which is covered at high tide. 

The singular beauty of this amazing scenic 
feature is partly due to its unusual symmetry but 
more to its brilliancy of color. Perc^ Rock is no 
such gray pile as one may find among the striking 
sea-ruins of the northern oceans, on the shores of 
Caithness at Thurso and Scrabster in Scotland, 
in Hoy and about Stromness in the Orkneys, and 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 23 

even the brighter shades in the rock piles of the 
Magdalen Islands farther out in the Gulf do not 
make a comparison adequate. Its walls are 
bathed in tints of purple-red, bright yellow and 
gray-blue, the natural shades of the limestone, 
and these are diversified by great streaks of white 
calcite which vein the mass. On its top the green 
carpet of grass spreads downward as the slope 
permits, while over the jagged anfractuosities 
near the summit, a deep orange-red lichen has 
added its color to the scheme. The top of the 
cliff is the home of countless gulls and cormorants 
ever moving about like a halo of fog scuds and 
screaming sempiternally in the same shrill notes 
that echoed on the sea cliffs of the lost mountain 
in the ages past. 

Seeking for some clew to the rate at which the 
sea has been devouring Perce Rock, I have looked 
for other evidence than can be found in the cliff 
itself. 

It is not strange that so marked a feature of the 
coast should have made a profound impression 
on the earliest explorers, and here and there are 



24 THE HEART OF GASPE 

references to it in the writings of some of them 
who had found the Isle Percee a haven for wood 
and water, and occasionally a note in the relations 
of the Recollet and Jesuit fathers. In Champlain's 
Des Sauvages of 1603, I find this account of it, 
but there is nothing in it that does not fit the 
conditions of to-day. "The Isle of Percee," he 
says, "is a very high rock sheer on both sides; in it 
is an arch through which shallops and boats can 
pass at high water. At ebb tide one can walk 
from the mainland to the island, it being only 
four or five hundred steps." 

The great explorer and founder of Canada was 
not then seeing the rock as it stands to-day. This 
is evident on reading the later accounts. The 
single arch he describes may be that now repre- 
sented by the passage seaward between the rock 
and the obelisk, but it is clear that the single 
arch of to-day was not then in existence. 

In 1672 Nicolas Denys, seigneur of Perc^, 
" Gouveneur Lieutenant General pour le Roy, et 
Proprietaire de toutes les Terres et Isles qui sont 
depuis le Cap de Campseaux, jusques au Cap des 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 25 

Roziers," wrote:* ''The Isle is a great rock which 
may be fifty to sixty fathoms in sheer height 
straight up from the foot of the two sides and has a 
width of three or four fathoms; at low water one 
can go from the mainland by foot all round it; 
it may have a length of three hundred and fifty 
or four hundred fathoms; it has been much longer, 
reaching even to the Island of Bonne-aventure; but 
the sea has devoured it at the foot so that it has 
fallen, and I have seen it when it had only one 
passage in the form of an arcade, through which a 
barge can pass at full sail. It is this which has 
given it the name of the Isle Percee. There have 
two others formed since, which are not so large 
but are growing all the time. It has the appear- 
ance that these passages weaken its foundation 
and will be the cause of its eventual destruction 
after which the sailors will no longer be able to 
work here. All of them that come here to fish 

* Description geographique et historique de Costes de 
FAmerique septentrionale. Avec I'histoire naturelle du Pais. 
Professor Ganong has recently translated this work for the 
Champlain Society and added thereto valuable annotations 
and biographical sketches. 



26 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

cast anchor on the lee of this island, at a length 
of two cables off; one has here three or four fathoms 
of water, further off is a constantly increasing 
depth." 

Father Sixte LeTac, who had visited the coast 
probably on his way to and from his mission in 
Newfoundland in 1689, spoke of the Rock as 
having but a single arch. 

Faucher St. Maurice, in his charming and 
cleverly padded sketches of a short trip along this 
coast (1877), records having seen in the' possession 
of Admiral Inglefield on board H. M. S. Bellerophon 
a copy of an engraving made in 1760 which repre- 
sented the rock with three arches through it. 
It has been my good fortune to obtain a copy of 
this old copper plate. Its date was the year after 
the fall of Quebec, and curiosity was doubtless 
keen enough in England over so remarkable a 
feature of her new conquest to justify the execu- 
tion of this expensive plate. It was "drawn by 
Captain Her'y Smyth on the Spot," and the same 
pride that led the skippers of the 1700's to have 
their ships painted on Sunderland and Liverpool 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 27 

jugs, led him to put his frigate in the foreground of 
the picture. The Rock is here viewed from the 
north with Mt. Joli at the right and Bonaventure 
at the left. Its arches are two in number, not 
three; and though the rear arch has now fallen it is 
noteworthy that the chief projections on the side 
of the Rock and the outline of its prow are essen- 
tially the same to-day as they were one hundred 
and fifty years ago. The distant view beyond the 
Rock shows the busy fishing fleet oE the lower 
beach. Rare as this picture is, I have inserted 
here in its place a copy of a still rarer print which 
was evidently adapted from Smyth's drawing and 
presents the same aspect. 

Father LeClercq, who was stationed at Perc6 
for twelve years from 1675 and again for a number 
of years after, interrupting his mission by a 
voyage to France, gave this description of the 
Rock, upon the accuracy of which we may rely, 
for it had been for all this time the most con- 
spicuous object within his vision: ''It," he says, 
referring to Gasp6 Bay, "is only Seven Leagues 
from the Isle Percee which is not, as some imagine. 



28 THE HEART OF GASPE 

an island capable of lodging inhabitants; because 
it is only a rough Rock steep on all sides, of an 
extraordinary height and a surprising abruptness. 
It is so pierced by three or four distinct passage- 
ways that the barges pass full manned and at full 
sail through the largest of these openings. It is 
from this fact that it derives the name of I'lsle 
Percee, although it is really only a peninsula or a 
Presqu'isle, of which one can easily make the 
circuit afoot when the sea is low; and resembles an 
island only at high water. It is separated from 
terra firma by only two or three acres [arpent = 
one hundred and eighty feet] of ground. It would 
seem as if it had formerly been joined thereto and 
that it had been cut off by the storms and tempests 
of the ocean."* 

The discrepancy in these accounts may arise 
from some disagreement between the dates of 
observation and of publication, but they can be 
reconciled to this conclusion, that the arches dur- 
ing the period of Denys's observation had grown 
from one to three or four and probably one of 
* Nouvelle Relation de la Gasp&ie, 1691, pp. 4, 5. 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 29 

these had soon thereafter fallen in. Reliance 
apparently cannot be placed on LeTac's account. 

I find no other descriptive account of the Rock 
throughout the whole of the eighteenth century 
and up to the time when the Abbe Ferland wrote 
of his missionary visitation along this coast in 
1836. Ferland's stay at Perce was brief, not more 
than two or three days' duration, and much of the 
material of his entertaining narrative was derived 
from other than original sources. Of the Rock he 
says: 

''The Isle Percee appears to have been formerly 
joined to Mt. Joli; it is separated therefrom only 
by a straight channel which is dry at low water. 
The length of the plateau is about eight acres 
and its width is reckoned at only from sixty to 
eighty feet. In its entire extent the rock is only a 
continuous clifT, the average height of which 
is two hundred and ninety feet. . . . The 
waves . . . have already cut out two arches 
remarkable for regularity. . . . The open pas- 
sages in the rock are about twenty-five feet wide, 
twenty feet in height and thirty in length. Through 



30 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

the principal arch the barges can pass at all times 
either under sail or by oars; through the other 
they can only float when the sea is high. The 
debris of the rock scattered all along bears witness 
that the sea is continuing its encroachments. Some 
day, perhaps, the arches will gradually fall in and 
the Isle Percee will form three immense columns 
which will rival in volume the pyramids of Egypt." 
Sir William Logan was at Perce in 1843 on his 
first field work as director of the Canadian Geo- 
logical Survey. While at the village he put up with 
a Mr. Moriarty and in the fragments of his journal 
which have been published by the late Professor 
Harrington * he says that his host formerly cut 
hay on the top of the Rock, but had abandoned 
his farming there some six years before, as a 
foolhardy fellow by the name of Pierre L'Egle 
took it into his head to dance on a projecting piece 
of rock which gave way and he was dashed to 
death on the beach. It seems indeed to have been 
common practice in the early days when clearings 
were small to take the hay from the summit of the 
* Life of Sir William Logan, Montreal, 1883. 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 31 

Rock and to gather the sea birds' eggs. To-day 
the angles of the Rock are so changed that to 
chmb it seems beyond human daring. 

On the 17th of June, 1845, the outer arch in the 
Rock fell. My informant, Mr. Phillip Le Boutil- 
lier, an engaging and vigorous man of more than 
eighty years and a companion of Logan in the for- 
ties, says that as he was on that day turning the key 
in the door of the Le Boutillier Co.'s store, he was 
startled by an earsplitting and thunderous crash 
and turning toward the Rock saw that amid 
clouds of dust and spray and the terrified screams 
of the birds, the outer and greater vault had 
fallen. And thus it stands to-day with but one of 
the three or four arches on which the eyes of Denys 
and LeClercq so often looked, and with a new one 
creeping at right angles to the rest, lengthwise 
through the base of the seaward obelisk. Here we 
behold, as under the eye, the ruin which the sea 
has wrought on this single isolated rock in the last 
two hundred and fifty years. I find on carefully 
comparing my measurements with the dimensions 
which can be derived from the Crown Land maps 



32 THE HEART OF GASPE 

of Perce, the original draft of which is not far from 
fifty years old, that there is no apparent change of 
proportions in this interval except in a lessening 
diameter at certain points. 

It is not often that a geologist gets hold of a 
proposition so concrete and uncomplicated as 
that which an isolated mass like Perce Rock pre- 
sents. A simple combination of two causes has 
contributed to the destruction of this mass, the 
sea and the frost. The destruction has gone on 
by leaps and bounds in the falling of arches 
carrying down thousands of tons of rock at a 
time, though the times were at distant intervals. 
But the steady work of the less violent agents 
never ceases. From Nicolas Denys's statement in 
1672, that on his first trip to Perc^ there was 
only one arch in the Rock, as Champlain saw it 
in 1603, but when he returned some years later 
he observed two others, and that subsequently 
in his day one of the latter broke down, it is evi- 
dent that the progress of destruction then went 
on at a rapid pace compared with its advance 
during the last century. But these arches have 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 33 

all been at the thin outer edge of the cliff which 
easily became honeycombed. This thinner part 
of the Rock is now nearly gone and the waters 
have a more serious problem before them. A 
thing of singular beauty indeed the long rock 
with its three or four arches, in the days of the 
1600's, must have been. To-day its proportions 
are more stable, for the single perforation lies 
under one of the highest parts. Its rearward 
obelisk is giving way and is perforated at its base, 
but the splendid mass itself is not perceptibly 
thinning to destruction. Let us look a little 
to its future. 

Perce Rock is six hundred feet from Mt. JoU 
along the sandbar over which one still walks at 
low tide. There is a beach on both sides for a 
part of the distance at low tide but it is an un- 
certain thing, disappearing at high water except 
in retreats on the north shore, and at no time can 
one make the circuit of the rock by foot. It is 
two hundred and eighty-eight feet high at the 
prow, two hundred and fifteen feet high at the 
arch and one hundred and fifty-four feet high at 



34 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

its outer end; it is fourteen hundred and twenty 
feet long, fifteen hundred and sixty-five feet from 
prow to outer end of the obelisk; it is about 
three hundred feet wide in its widest parts. The 
part of the Rock exposed above the water weighs 
about four million tons. 

From the broken vertical strata of its cliffs, 
fragments fall easily and the winter's storms 
and frosts bring down large masses. Yet its 
blocks are wedged in tight, and in roving back 
and forth at the foot of the cliff day after day, 
I have not observed the actual fall of a single 
large piece. However, the base of the cliff is 
covered with large masses and the shores of Mt. 
Joli made up of the fragments washed from the 
Rock. The most striking pile of fallen blocks 
now lies on the north side at one of the projecting 
angles and is composed of ten to twenty pieces 
weighing from five to ten tons each. They are 
the accumulations of no one seems to know how 
many years. I have found no one ready to venture 
a suggestion as to how much of this rock falls 
annually. Certainly more comes down in some 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 35 

years than others, and the fall of an arch would 
break all averages. This latter factor, however, 
is now practically eliminated. After careful ob- 
servation I should regard three hundred tons a 
year a fair average, five hundred tons a year large, 
one thousand tons most exceptional. With the first 
approximation it will take sea and weather up- 
ward of thirteen thousand years to accomplish the 
ruin of the cliff; with the second, eight thousand, 
with the third, four thousand. Unborn generations 
of Gaspesians will gaze upon the undimmed 
luster of this magnificent cliff. 

I offer the foregoing prophecy as an oblation 
to the Genie de VIsle Percee. She has had her 
own troubles and I would not add to them. 
"Many myths have grown up about this rock," 
says one writer naively, after telling a marvelous 
tale of the unceasing battles between the feathered 
dwellers on its summit, cormorants against gulls, 
whenever one of either kind, big with temerity, 
ventures over the rigidly drawn and closely 
guarded boundaries of the other's domain, splitting 
the heavens with their militant outcry. 



36 THE HEART OF GASPE 

The strata of Perce Rock teem with fossils. 
There are the strange denizens of the ancient 
sea in which these strata were laid down as sedi- 
ments, brachiopods of many species, bivalves, lim- 
pets and whelks and trilobites. The most striking 
of them all are the trilobites, ancient precursors of 
the lobsters of the coves. Here are to be found the 
remains of one of the largest of these creatures 
known, the Dalmanites Perceensis, which was 
sometimes two feet long; and another, D. Biardi, 
with a trident on his nose. One could not work 
over a ton of this rock without finding at least 
a score of these crustaceans. Let us suppose-there 
is one in each of the four million tons. There is 
also a singularly graceful brachiopod known as 
Chonetes Canadensis. It would be hard to dissect 
an average ton of the Rock without turning out 
these by hundreds. Let us say one hundred; then 
Perce Rock contains at least four million trilobites 
and four hundred million specimens of Chonetes 
Canadensis. Other species in their order, there 
are many of them, and these are but samples. 
But my figures are absurdly small. Let them 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 37 

serve to convey some notion of the enormous 
profusion of life represented in this httle section 
of the ancient ocean bed and give an added 
feature of interest to this attractive spot. 

If one needed proof that the sea has always 
been the alma nutrix of life, here it is, not to be 
surpassed in the daily scenes which have been 
enacted along the Gaspe coast for more than two 
hundred and fifty years in the codfishing. Millions 
of cod are yearly taken from these waters, but 
like the widow's cruse of oil, they fail not. If 
all these millions of all these years were added 
together they would not equal in number the 
remains of the animals now lying embedded in 
the Perc^ Rock. 

* * * * * 

It is the extraordinary destruction of the lime- 
stone cliffs that gives to Perce much of its pictur- 
esqueness. Aside from the Pierced Rock we have 
evidence of this in the serrated cliffs of the Mu- 
railles which rise from the water to six hundred feet 
in concave fronts, the almost vanished remnant of 
a majestic mountain which partly spanned the 



38 THE HEART OF GASPE 

Malbay. The Murailles begin with low Cape 
Barre at the end of the North Beach and the rocks 
rise higher and higher to the chmax in double 
pointed Red Peak, beyond which lies the lofty 
fault-scarp of the Grande Coupe. They, too, 
like the Perce Rock, are brilliantly tinted and both 
are geologically the same, though in the sea- 
wracked topography they seem to have belonged 
to different mountains. 

To the series of limestone cliffs here, belong the 
gray Mt. Joli and Cape Canon, whose escarpments 
divide the North and South beaches. They too 
stand with strata erect, parallel with those of 
Perce Rock from which the sunken outer reefs 
of Mt. Joli are not more than fifty feet away in 
the line of their courses. These are but low and 
somber headlands, handmaidens of Perc^ Rock 
which shines more brilliantly by their presence. 



Ill 

Scenery of Gaspe Basin and Bay — Its Rocks in Nature and Art 

We have spoken thus far particularly only 
of the scenery which belongs to the limestone 
mountains and their ragged coast lines. There 
is a very close dependence between the appearance 
of a mountain in the landscape and the texture 
of the rock that composes it, so that after all we 
are thrown back to a consideration of these moun- 
tains according to their kind. 

On top of the limestone strata lies an enormous 
series of sandstones, folded and broken; no one 
knows their thickness. This trememdous mantle 
of rocks spreads inland from Little Gaspe on the 
Forillon, from Point St. Peter and Malbay, covers 
all the country about Gaspe Basin and constitutes 
the rough ranges of the northern interior. Sir 
William Logan estimated these rocks to be about 
seven thousand feet thick, but though this may 
39 



40 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

be an overstatement yet there is thickness enough 
to make very majestic elevations if the whole 
or greater part were exposed at any one point. 
The interior of Gaspe County is a heavily wooded, 
tenantless domain, still a place of trails and por- 
tages, as little reduced to the pursuits and demands 
of civilization as the interior of Patagonia. But 
mountains of the same type as those further inland, 
though of gentler expression, are those which 
circle the Gaspe Basin. Here, withdrawn from 
the fierce play of the Gulf storms, the softer and 
rounder outlines prevail. The Nor'west and 
Sou'west Arms of the Bay, continuing into the 
Dartmouth and York rivers, run back along 
ancient depressions or troughs in the folded rocks. 
Gaspe village is at the axilla of these arms. If 
the traveler will let his rambles lead him around 
the crest of Cape O'Hara and down the raised sea 
beach below St. Albert's Church he may observe 
the sandstone foundations of Ga«pe Mountain 
sloping at a steep angle toward the north and he 
may follow them for a long distance up the Dart- 
mouth river, to the volcanic dike at L'Anse-aux- 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 41 

Cousins and beyond, always at this inclination. 
Across the Nor 'west Arm above Peninsula he will 
find them sloping south, the two slopes meeting 
in a trough at the bottom of the Bay. Let him 
follow the shore southward from the inner docks 
among the Robin fishing stores and on toward 
Gaspe South, or along the road on the other 
side of the York, and he may note that the 
rocks soon dip in just the reverse direction to 
that at the Dartmouth, pitching downward to 
the south. The crest of the great fold of the strata 
passes through Gaspe Mountain not far away 
from Baker's hotel. As the hills rise behind this 
delightful little village ''where," says Ferland, 
''live the aristocrats of Gaspe," the bending of the 
strata brings the hmestones, which lie buried 
beneath the sandstones, to the surface at the 
highest summits. One may follow the old portage 
trail from the clearing back of Baker's up through 
the woods over the first mountain but only the 
sandstones will appear. If he will take a more 
strenuous walk and chmb the second mountain, 
separated from the first by the portage road 



42 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

running from L'Anse-aux-Cousins to Gaspe South, 
there at the tops he will find the limestones broken 
through the strata which lie over them. It may 
be well to reflect on what this phenomenon sig- 
nifies. If, say five thousand feet of sandstones 
with two thousand feet of limestones beneath 
them have been folded up into mountains, then 
the limestones can be exposed from under their 
mantle only in one or both of two ways. Either 
the rock masses have been cracked and broken 
and by slipping apart have exposed the lower 
beds, or the entire overlying mass on the crest 
of the fold has been worn away. I think it likely 
that the two causes have conspired in giving the 
hills their present form, but it is evident that there 
has been a removal of tremendous volumes of rock, 
partly by the slow process of natural decay and 
partly by the agency of ice and water. The 
hills of Gaspe Basin and the higher summits 
of the interior would together constitute a great 
plateau w^ere it not for the distant folds which 
traverse it like that which crosses Gaspe Basin. 
The scenery of the Basin is a restful contrast to 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 43 

that outside. Had the wasting forces which have 
worn off the summits of the hills gone farther down 
about the limestones they would have left more 
ragged crests behind them, but the softer sand- 
stones have made only gentle curves. There is 
but little room on the shores of the beautiful 
Basin between the water and mountain, but from 
L'Anse-aux-Cousins around to Gaspe South the 
slopes have been brought under cultivation and 
the spruce and fir driven upward. There are not 
many sights so inviting as the outlook from the 
height of these clearings down the Bay, around 
through the narrow passage where the great bars of 
Sandy Beach and the Peninsula nearly strangle 
the waterway, down along the hills of the Forillon 
to Cape Gaspe; and in the other direction the eye 
follows the shore line from Cape Ramsay along 
the course of the Basin, which is bounded by a 
rising summit of like hills. The Basin is a harbor 
of such dimensions and absolute security that 
it is full of craft of many kinds; the schooners of 
the fishing establishments, the cruisers of the 
cable inspection and fisheries service, the packet- 



44 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

boats to Anticosti and the Labrador, now and 
then a pleasure yacht; when the sea is heavy 
outside, the fishing barges come scurrying in by 
scores; the dismal tug, which did the ferry to 
Peninsula, and the old flats and scows of the ferry 
to York, are now replaced by gasolene craft while 
every week come the Quebec steamers, and twice 
a week the steam galleon that plies back and forth 
into Chaleur Bay. 

From Gaspe eastward through Haldimand and 
Douglastown the same sandstones extend, making 
low rocky shores, but changing in color from gray 
shades into red, and forming the red banks of 
the south shores of the Bay to Point St. Peter. 
Here they face the Gulf and, though still low, the 
waters have played havoc with them. These rocks 
are sometimes very coarse, and the play of the 
waves readily works them out into caverns and 
grottoes. At Point St. Peter the waters have cut 
off little Plateau Island and honeycombed it with 
holes like the subterranean workings of a giant 
mole. 

The sublimity and grandeur of a rock formation 



SCENERY OF THE GULF COAST 45 

can be displayed only in cliff or crag or mountain 
peak; its beauty is often veiled until it plays its 
part in the realization of some grand creation of 
the artist or some poem of the architect. The 
great buildings of the world are the exaltation 
and the dignification of its rocks. Art alone has 
known how to elicit from them the qualities which 
in combination contribute to the finer intellectual 
enjoyment. The finest specimen in the world of 
the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, the formation 
that Hugh Miller loved to describe, is Skibo 
Castle, and the most striking example of the 
Gaspe sandstones, which are of the same geological 
formation, is the new church of St. Michel at 
Perce. The soft red brown of the body stone, 
relieved by the spots made by the shale pebbles in 
them, lends a dignity to the fine lines of the majes- 
tic and beautiful building; while a too somber 
effect is relieved by sills and lintels of a green 
freestone. The finished edifice is a glorification of 
Nature's crude product. 



THE SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 

Length of Gaspe coast — North shore — Its Appalachian moun- 
tains — Grande Greve to Cap-des-Rosiers — E7id of St. 
Lawrence river — Bon Ami cliffs — Wrecks at Cap-des- 
Rosiers — Geologrj of the cliffs — Anse Louise — Jersey Cove — 
Griffon Cove — Fox River — Earhj fishmasters on this coast — 
Strike of fishermen in 1909 — Chlorydorme — Anse-a-Valleau 
— Fame Point — Grande Vallee 

So long is the Gasp6 coast that no boat can 
circle it in the light of a single day. The traveler 
is quite sure of being doomed to pass some of its 
attractions in the night, whichever way his course 
may lead; and, as things fall out, he will more 
than likely be sleeping as his vessel passes up and 
down the waters of the great river, the St. Law- 
rence, hugging close to the south shore where 
nestle little fishing villages among the endroits 
into the forbidding ranges of sheer black cliffs. 
Somewhat for this reason and more because of the 
very rough aspect of the country, the still primi- 
tive simplicity of its life which guarantees no sure 
comforts to the traveler, the river shore holds its 

46 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 47 

primal attractions, the least known, the least 
invaded and by nature in many ways the most 
imposing in its scenery of any part of the great 
peninsula, saving always Perce. 

Its mountains are the ridges of the Appala- 
chians which run nearly parallel to the shore. It is 
they that have guided the flow of this most ancient 
river. The throes of mother earth that produced 
the one made the other; but their sheer walls are 
testimony that they have yielded to the impact 
of storm waves driven across these tempestuous 
waters from the nor'east, and while the shore has 
changed little in the memory of man, yet the 
actual edge of the river near the tip of the little 
peninsula is fully five miles out, drawing closer 
and closer to the shore as one goes farther up. 
Beneath the near waters lies a buried rock plat- 
form which the waves have carved out, a rem- 
nant of the majestic mountains which once raised 
their crests where the fisherman now drops his 
hook. 

The traveler is not likely to enter this part of 
Gaspe by descending the shore from the point 



48 THE HEART OF GASPE 

where he must now leave the railroad, Matane, 
far back in Rimouski County. He may do this 
and find a road all the way, possible, picturesque, 
with many skyward angles, leading through 
wide-scattered fishing hamlets and coming down 
now and again to the valleys of the greater streams, 
points where he must turn far inland to make his 
portages. Some of the sturdier traveling men 
encircle the coast in this way, still making Matane 
a point of departure or destination and skirting 
the whole shore line to the head of Chaleur Bay 
on wheels. But he who seeks more to come in 
touch with the genius of this remote coast will 
take another direction and he may penetrate into 
the heart of these rolling spruce-topped dark 
shale mountains by any one of three roads. Cross- 
ing from Gaspe Basin to Peninsula he may drive 
by the ''new road" which starts in a little way 
up the "Nor 'west Arm" and traverses the moun- 
tains by a pretty stiff pass, coming out at the 
village of Fox River, or he may take the older 
portage road eastward of Peninsula and cross by 
the Grande Cavee brook which discharges at 



1 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 49 

Griffon Cove some six miles east of Fox River. 
The third way is for the man who really wishes to 
see the region and cares little how he goes or when 
he arrives; he will drive from Peninsula along the 
Forillon to Grande Greve and there across the single 
mountain ridge, the only one that now remains out 
on that distant point of all the complex of ranges, 
by the King's road, whose beauties and difficulties 
we have elsewhere described. To this traveler will 
come, one after another, the brilliantly painted 
scenes in the cyclorama of Gaspe Bay, and then as 
he turns his back upon them to reach the '' decline 
and fall off" from the summit of the King's road at 
Grande Greve he is brought suddenly face against 
the broad St. Lawrence waters and the long low- 
lying menacing black rocks of Cap-des-Rosiers and 
its cove settlement. Fifteen minutes is time enough 
to bring him from the waters of Gaspe Bay to 
those of the St. Lawrence river. 

I have thought to find a comparison in the 
shape of this narrow seagirt peninsula to the 
form of a man's closed fist with index finger 
extended, the finger being the half ridge of moun- 



50 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

tains that runs from Grande Greve down and out 
to the cape and hght at Shiphead — the Forillon, — 
so to complete the figure let us extend the little 
finger of this hand and that may in a way simu- 
late the projecting rock-tongue of Cap-des-Rosiers 
surmounted by its majestic lighthouse. When 
once one is safely down the mountain road and 
has returned thanks for his good deliverance, 
heartened by the assurance that he may if he 
will go back some other way, the view behind 
him is one of stern impressiveness and grandeur. 
This he will not get at its best without climbing 
the winding stairs of the immaculate lighthouse 
and from its top taking in the whole cycle of the 
stupendous cliffs, stretching from far to the west 
out to the very land's end at the east. Nature 
evidently did not intend that the river side of this 
peninsula should have any commerce by land 
with the bay shore and so put this sheer sharp 
ridge of rocks right between the two and thus 
far man has not made much of a success of con- 
quering the barrier. 
By the navigator the St. Lawrence river is 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 51 

assumed to end at Cap-des-Rosiers. Mount St. 
Alban where it faces the cape stands 1800 feet 
above the water; its blank gray walls reach far 
westward drawing more and more away from the 
river shore, while eastward its cliffs are cut off by 
the curve of the cove. There the lower range 
behind it comes into the foreground and its cliffs 
rise straight from the water edge in a line four miles 
long to the end of the land — Bon Ami cliffs, the 
sympathetic Guernseymen have called them after 
one of their own number, a misnomer in intent for 
the beachless shore affords no landing place for 
boats and when the wind blows from any quarter 
they are a veritable abatis of rocks. The cliffs 
are somber, they are all gray, and the brilliancy 
of coloring which makes the mountains of Perc6 
so enthralling is lacking, but their dark tints are 
in keeping with the history of this river coast so 
far as its records have kept themselves. When 
one fully realizes how this angry bastion of rocks 
with its echeloned capes reinforced by the low 
lying point of Hosiers faces the prevailing storm 
winds sweeping in from off the straits of Belleisle 



52 THE HEART OF GASPE 

and how the chffs are only the mountain remnants 
which the storms have spared, then comes a 
mental picture of what these rocks must have 
done to the shipping in the old days before any 
lights were placed here. Cap-des-Rosiers was the 
most fearsome and destructive place on all the 
mainland coast of the Gulf and has taken toll of 
craft and sailors since the earliest days of naviga- 
tion on these waters. Of these rough days stories 
are many but records are few. I have told else- 
where of one which has left an extraordinary 
interest behind, the stern shield of some lost 
craft, bearing the carved face of Jacques Cartier; 
another is recorded in the buried cannon which 
lie in the bottom mud at Cape Bon Ami, one of 
which the Fruing boys have just succeeded in 
raising. Still another is recorded on the monument 
at Cap-des-Rosiers erected not long ago to the 
memory of a shipload of Irish emigrants dashed 
to death on these black capes.* 

* The inscription on the monument is: Sacred to the mem- 
ory of Irish Immigrants from Shgo wrecked here on April 28, 
1847. Ship Carricks. 87 are buried here. Erected by pa- 
rishioners of St. Patrick's parish, Montreal. 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 53 

Some of the settlements on this south shore are 
very ancient and probably among the earliest is 
that snuggled in between the lighthouse and the 
cliffs of St. Alban — along the fine beach of Cap- 
des-Rosiers cove. Fishermen from Gaspe Bay 
and Perce got in here and settled, probably as far 
back as the 1600's, and their cottages dot this 
shore. They are all within easy reach of good 
offshore fishing and so few or none of the men go 
to the distant American Bank some 15 miles 
away and as a result the cod are brought to the 
splitting table fresh and firm of flesh. * 

* In all northern Gasp^ there is httle banks fishing and to 
this fact is very largely due the superior quality of well cured 
fish from these northern stations, Perc6, Bonaventure and 
stands from there up the "south shore." In the offshore 
fishing the catch is soon ashore and dressed while quite fresh, 
but when the men lie off for distant grounds and are gone 
days or all the week at a time, the fish suffer more or less from 
sweating. The Green bank or American bank (as it is called 
on the Admiralty maps, though loyal Canadians are seldom 
caught using this name which comes down from the days 
when the Gloucestermen abounded) lies about ten miles off 
Cape Gasp6 and Shiphead, but it seems to be less frequented 
than formerly. It is a rocky shoal, the last lost tip of the 
Appalachian mountain ranges. The banks farther south, 
Orphans bank, Miscou and others, are reached by the men 
of Cape Cove and Grand River and once within the Bay 



54 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

It may chance that the traveler, after absorbing 
the marvelous scenery of this spot from the top of 
the lighthouse, should wonder what all these rock 
cliffs mean to the geologist. A few words may 
help. The low cliffs of black slate on which the 
lighthouse stands and which make all the shore 
cliffs and reefs from here as far westward as Gaspe 
County goes, stand up in almost vertical rock 
beds, their strata often distorted and twisted, 
showing every evidence of tremendous disturbance. 
These are all very ancient rocks laid down on the 
sea bottom in early Silurian and Cambrian ages 
and they prove their date by the fossils which are 
found in them. The higher cliffs of St. Alban 
Mountain and the Bon Ami capes are of very 
much later age. When the lower beds had been 
laid down in the Silurian ocean, then dried out 
into rocks, turned up into mountains and their 

Chaleur the greater part of the catch brought to the stations 
at Paspebiac is from these distant grounds. Not all the fish 
of large size are from the banks either. Mr. Charles Biard 
of Perc6, who prepares a most superior quahty of skinless and 
boneless cod and requires a fine large fat and firm flesh, takes 
aU his supply from offshore waters, not venturing to use the 
banks cod on account of the possibility of its deterioration. 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 55 

tops worn away by the rain and weather, they 
were sunk again beneath the sea and on this 
rough and jagged sea floor the muds and sands 
which now make the high rock walls of the moun- 
tain range were deposited, — till they in their 
turn, still holding all the marvelous forms of life 
which played out their days in the ancient sea, 
were lifted up to their present position. With 
them came up again the older black slates to 
where they now lie. The high cliffs belong to the 
Devonian system and between the rocks above 
and those beneath there is a great gap in the 
record, for there fails all the upper part of the 
Silurian system whose deposits could not be 
formed in this place because then the lower 
Silurian rocks were dry land and so out of reach 
of the sea. That's the story in a nutshell. The 
traveler down the Gaspe side of the Forillon has 
only Devonian rocks in his mountain slopes; when 
he crosses the portage and comes to the river all 
his rocks are Cambro-Silurian and he is there 
traversing a much more ancient world. 



56 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

But let us turn from these hard thoughts and 
with backs to the majestic chffs, the fishing cove 
and the fight, face westward up the coast road. 
With the multiplying mountain ranges on his left 
and the waters of the river on his right the traveler 
may drive some fifteen miles from Cap-des- 
Rosiers and still be in the parish of St. Alban, 
with its little population of less than a thousand 
people hugging close to the shores. From here 
little more than the first concession is in any way 
suited to the slender agricultural needs of settle- 
ments which are wholly given over to the fishing. 
The road runs first by the pretty embrasures of 
L'Anse-a-Louise and Jersey Cove, one the memory 
of a French vessel wrecked long ago and the other 
speaking of the early Channel Islanders who 
scattered here and there up this shore. Then it 
reaches L'Anse-au-gris-fond, the bay with a gray 
bottom, — Griffon Cove, as Bayfield translated it 
on his charts of the coast, — a pretty hamlet, strong 
with the smell of cod and long the seat of active 
fishing agencies. More than a half century ago 
John Le Boutillier, one of the early competitors 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 57 

of Charles Robin of the Gaspe coast, and a name 
still greatly respected in the county, established a 
fishing station here and others have followed till a 
right thrifty settlement has grown up in the 
parish. By the time the visitor has reached this 
spot he will have learned that he is in a French 
country and that English is an almost unknown 
tongue. The farther on he goes the richer becomes 
the flavor of New France and the ancien regime. 
From here onward passing the little bay of 
L'Anse Fugere, the road soon comes down to 
the metropolis of this south shore, Fox River, 
Riviere-aux-Renards, the canonical parish of Saint- 
Martin. Here is great fishing, controlled by the 
venerable firms of C. R. C. (Charles Robin Co.), 
Wm. Fruing Co., and William Hyman & Son, all 
dating far back. When Thomas Pye of Gaspe 
Basin published his Canadian Scenery: District 
of Gaspe in 1866 and in so doing gave the first 
pictures ever printed of Fox River and Grande 
Greve, there were, he says, five mercantile houses 
at this port, Wm. Fruing & Co., Wm. Hyman, 
John de St. Croix, John LeConteur and Blouin 



58 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

Bros. The C. R. C. came in later and to-day they, 
with the Fruing and Hyman companies, divide 
the business of the place. The cove is dotted full 
of fishing boats, gathered in clusters before the 
three stations. Across the mouth of Fox river 
runs the great sand bar joining the east and west 
side of the valley — the C. R. C. and the Hyman 
stations with the Fruing station — cluttered up 
with cookhouses, storehouses, the drying stages 
and their refuse, while the little outlet of the river 
at the west is crossed by a simple footbridge of 
planks on wooden horses. The bounding hills are 
not high and the valley has been cut so broad that 
the traveler with horse must make a long detour 
inland and back to reach the further side of the 
bay; so the village really consists of two parts 
while the sand bar and the plank bridge wide 
enough only for one abreast, form the esplanade 
which binds together the social centers of the 
settlement. 

There is an air of prosperity in the place. The 
low hills are largely under cultivation even though 
the population is almost wholly given over to 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 59 

the fishing. The homes of the fish merchants, 
Mr. Horatio Hyman, Mr. Carrel of the Fruing 
Company, are most inviting. I have tasted their 
hospitaHty and rejoice still in pleasant reminis- 
cences of a gracious hostess, savory cooking, 
unrestrained welcome to a stranger for whom the 
best was deemed none too good. Fox River is a 
place of many interesting features, well worth a 
reconnoissance if the traveler can have any good 
luck in finding quarters. The river is a feeble 
stream but it has cut a large valley and its em- 
bouchure is so deep as to make a pretty sure 
shelter for small boats. The rock reefs that run 
out from the bounding capes east and west narrow 
the cove but render it more secure in nor'east and 
sou'west storms which blow in here with tremen- 
dous violence. Being so important a station on 
this coast, two roads lead to it, that by which we 
have come and which joined the portage from 
Peninsula at GrifTon Cove, and the new road 
straight across the mountains from the Nor'west 
Arm of Gasp6 Basin which is stupendously rough 
but only 12 miles as the cormorant flies, while 



60 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

we have now on our way from Cap-des-Rosiers 
already traveled sixteen miles. 

Fifty years ago the King's road which now goes 
through west to Rimouski ended at Fox River and 
the settlement though almost wholly French is not 
a very ancient one, at least it will hardly date 
back a century, which is young compared with 
Cap-des-Rosiers and Ste-Anne-des-Monts. So 
the Renards have not shared in the very early 
history of the coast, but they have been taking 
their share in the introduction of some modern 
procedures, for it was here that in 1909 occurred 
the first ''strike" in the history of the fishing 
business in all Gasp6. In this extraordinay out- 
burst, which would have been inconceivable under 
the drastic rule of the early fishing establishments, 
the men, convinced that the merchants had cut 
the price of fish too low and roused by certain 
wild spirits from further up the river, roughly 
mobbed themselves together to the number of 
some five hundred, broke out into an actual riot of 
protest, attacking the managers of the fishing 
stores, threatening fire and bloodshed on the com- 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 61 

panics and indeed so serious an aspect did the affair 
assume that the government at once dispatched its 
cruisers Canada and Christine to the place where 
a strong force of marines landed and took above 
twenty prisoners. We may believe the men bitterly 
repented their action as they faced the horrors of 
confinement in the Perce gaol.* The unsophisti- 
cated fisherman had heard of strikes from reading 

* It could not have been to the Perc6 gaol that Le Moine 
in his "Jonathan Oldbuck" refers in telling of a conversation 
between a government commissioner detailed to examine into 
the discipline of the Gasp6 prisons and a jailor. The commis- 
sioner found the jailor on the steps of the Palace of Justice 
seated in a big easy chair and smoking a very large pipe. 
"Mr. Commissioner," said the jailor and host, "I am happy 
to make your acquaintance. You are sent by Government it 
is said to straighten up matters generally. Won't you step in 
and see how we manage here? My turnkey is out on the banks 
catching his winter supply of cod. The jail is well patronized. 
I have eighteen prisoners to look after, all in capital health." 

"Well," said the Commissioner, "let us see them." 

"Are you in a hurry?" rephed the genial jailor. "Could 
you not call after simset and I will have them all in attend- 
ance and in apple pie order." 

"Well not easily; in fact I must see the jail and its inmates 
right off to make up my report." 

"Sorry your honor should have so little leisure. The fact 
is when the weather is fine, I turn out my captives at 8 A. M. 
sharp. They take a lounge around the coimtry, do up my 
garden, catch a few fresh trout for my dinner and at sundown 
all return safe to their quarters. I treat them well and they 



62 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

his ^'SoleiV' or '' UEvenemenV' and thought here 
lay his remedy, but the unorganized throng was 
arrayed against a business which, next to the Hud- 
son Bay Fur Co., was the oldest and once the most 
conservative and perfectly organized business on 
this hemisphere. To it a remonstrance of this kind 
from its workmen was the rankest modernism and 
such an outbreak is not likely soon to be repeated. 

Gems of humanity sparkle in the least expected spots. 
It would not beseem me to mention here the entirely 
delightful and uplifting personalities it has been my ex- 
cellent good fortune to meet in these villages of Gaspe. 
They have given me much. I owe them much beyond 
my power to repay. But this story I may put dowm. 
A few years ago there was an epidemic of diphtheria 
in Fox River and its ravages aided by the unsanitary 
conditions among the fisher families were terrific. To 
escape the menace of this disease Mr. Horatio Hyman 
sent his son William (bearer of a venerable and re- 
spected name) to his brother's home at Grande Gr^ve. 
It was there I met this young man and there he joined 
with me in long walks as I tramped the countryside on 
geological quest, and in longer talks in the woods, on 
the mountains, of an evening on the beaches and the 



do not mind being deprived of their evening amusements. I 
wanted to change this practice but the county member inter- 
fered as he had a friend to look after. Wait till evening; 
they are looking for my two cows now which have strayed 
away into the woods." 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 63 

galleries. He was then 19 years of age with an intel- 
lectual keenness of an extraordinary quality and a 
thirst for knowledge that seemed unquenchable. In 
his home at Fox River, far removed from libraries, he 
had saturated his strangely mature mind with the 
philosophies of Spencer and Huxley, the works of 
Darwin, the standards of English and French classics 
and had acquired a far reaching knowledge of Semitic 
history and the philosophy of Jewish theism. His most 
eager taste and the bent of his mind were in the direc- 
tion of science. I have been thrown in contact with 
many young men in search of an education but I am 
entirely free to say that I have never known a youth 
of such intellectual promise. It would seem as if the 
world were in sore need of just the man of that promise. 
But the promise was not to be kept. The brilliant boy, 
touched with a spark that shone as genius, entered 
McGill the next year and in the midst of his course was 
stricken with death. I lament to-day and always shall 
the loss of that promise to humanity. 

The way grows long from Fox River on. The 
road still hugs the shore for eight miles further, 
passing capes and coves projected before the eye 
at various angles as one rises and falls on the un- 
dulating road. There is no place to stop; the 
traveler must satisfy himself with the scenery, 
brief runs into the rocks or gullies, perhaps with 
wishes for a longer stay, — there is nothing to eat 
this side of Chlorydorme and not much there. 



64 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

The road leaves the river with its attractive coves 
just beyond Anse-a-Valleau for the mountain 
cHffs now come down with their steep curves and 
sheer faces to the water front, and the traveler's 
view now changes to the heavily spruce-covered 
valleys between the mountains, with some pretty 
serious climbs to negotiate. When one gets so far 
along as this, it is worth while to turn aside a few 
miles beyond Anse-a-Valleau and climbing up 
and down the zigzag passes toward the river 
come down to Fame Point with its fine signal and 
wireless stations ranged along the crest of a high 
bluff, a sight familiar enough to those who travel 
this coast by water. The hungry voyageur is 
quite likely to understand why the French called 
this place Pointe-d-faim, — that name will have a 
meaning to him, — the English distortion has none. 
But this detour from the King's road is a serious 
one and if the course lies straight away it will be 
still through the valley behind the mountain 
wall until it again approaches the coast at Grand 
Etang, crossing this beautiful seigniory between 
the fine lake and the cove on the shore. 



SHORE OF THE GREAT RIVER 65 

At Chlorydorme, 26 miles up from Fox river, 
we are again at an important station for the fishing, 
where twin capes project from between the twin 
rivers of Grand and Petit Chlorydorme and the 
mountains rise high and green in the background. 
Capes and rivers, mountains and coves give 
this attractive spot all the characteristics of St. 
Lawrence scenery. The name has a strangely 
Greek look, but Chlorydorme is the ancient seign- 
iory of Cloridon and the name echoes a home spot 
in old France dear to the heart of the grantee. 
Now the road leaves at the right Cape Crow (Cape 
Corbeau), Canoe Cove (Anse-a-canot) , Frigate 
Point (Anse Fregate), White Pine river (R. a Epin- 
ette blanche) and at last, forty miles from Fox River 
reaches Grande Vallee in the seigniory of Grande- 
Vallee-des-Monts, beautiful in its situation, lying 
between lofty ranges of the Shickshocks, its high 
rock terraces with their sloping strata and the 
wave swept rock platforms at the shore, the deep 
reentrant of the sharp walled valley making a 
warm invitation to stop lest one might go farther 
and fare worse. 



THE PERCfi MOUNTAINS 

Distant skyline — Profile of Sainte Anne — Singular beauty of 
the mountain passes — Grande Coupe — Amphitheater — 
White Mountain — Early cross on Mt. Ste Anne — Mic- 
macs or Souriquois at Perci — Vision on Mt. Ste Anne — 
Breakdown of the mountain folds 

The most far reaching skyHne on the whole 
Gasp6 coast is that of the cluster of mountain 
heights which He back of Perc6. It catches the 
traveler's eye in passing through the outer reaches 
of Chaleur Bay; in crossing the Northumberland 
Strait from Prince Edward Island, or, from the 
north, in rounding the Cape of the Forillon. Only 
the end of this mountain cluster faces the Perce 
harbor with its sheer red front and its flat roUing 
top — the sacred mount of Ste Anne. 

It may be a bit of fancy on my part, but looking 
toward this mountain cluster from the distant 
Northumberland Strait, the skyline of the moun- 
tain cluster is that of a reclining woman, her head 
resting at the shrine of Ste Anne and the outline 

66 



THE PERC£ MOUNTAINS 67 

of her figure stretching out into the westward 
curves of the other summits. It is a singular moun- 
tain pile, squeezed in behind Perce and filling the 
back-ground from L'Anse-au-Beaufils at the south 
to Corner-of-the-Beach at the north. It does not 
reach far back into the hinterland, but it does 
make a barricade that for long years shut Perce 
out from communication with the other coast 
settlements except by water. The traveler in 
search of the picturesque will find it in these 
mountains, for the scenery is extraordinary if 
indeed it is not unique. 

Through the mountains run two roads; the old 
road, at the south, takes the easier grades, but 
curves under a beetling amphitheater of red cliffs 
which is startling in its subUmity; the ''short 
cut" starts at the north and at the first height of 
grade skirts beneath the ''Grande Coupe," another 
majestic vertical cliff which faces the Malbay 
through a deep coule bastioned by sentinel peaks; 
then on its further course the road rising and 
falling, gives glimpses now and again of the 
waters of the bay between the spruce-clad slopes. 



68 THE HEART OF GASPE 

One may venture to call the effect Alpine in its 
impressiveness, but the scenery is not of Alpine 
mold. Its beauty and sublimity come not from 
folded crag and ragged scaur but from the great 
vertical rock faces which bound Ste Anne on three 
sides and from which have been broken away 
the low-lying red rocks of the shores and of 
Bonaventure Island. These walls, east, north 
and south, are fault-faces, and thus Mt. Ste 
Anne has been made, an isolated table bounded 
in three directions by inaccessible cliffs. 

Sainte-Anne was the Table-a-rolante of Cham- 
plain and Denys, and even of Ferland; for it 
does roll away toward the northeast, making way 
for an easy ascent. Denys says: "elle est platte 
et de forme caree, ce qui lui a donne ce nom"; 
but some indifferent person afterward wrote the 
name Table-a-Rolland, and thus it has been often 
printed. It is long since the mountain was turned 
over to the guardianship of Ste-Anne, and as 
far back as 1675 Father Enjalran, landing at 
Perce, found its summit plateau crowned with a 
cross. Over its northward and gentler slope, 




PERCfe. THE FAULT FACE OF MT. STE ANNE OVERLOOKING THE "PARK, 
WITH A SPREAD OF FISH AT THE C R. C. STATION 




PERCfe. A VIEW IN THE MOUNTAINS BEHIND PERCE VILLAGE 



THE PERCE MOUNTAINS 69 

pious ardor has cut out through spruce and fir 
a broad and grassy way to the shrine on its top. 
Sainte-Anne, with all the mountain that lies 
behind her between the two roads, is of the red 
conglomerate rock which we call the ''Bonaventure 
formation," its nearly horizontal layers lying on 
the edges of the vertical strata that constitute 
the shore cliffs. The whole of this red mountain 
is encircled on the landward side by a higher 
range — White Mountain — made of the vertical 
limestones of the shores, and which swing from 
Cap Blanc into greater heights than Ste Anne 
herself, meeting the sea again near Corner-of-the- 
Beach. 

In the long ago days of LeClercq's mission to 
the Gaspesian Indians, the Micmac they called 
themselves, the Souriquois of the French, there 
roamed these shores and fastnesses some five 
hundred redskins, as the Recollet father counted 
them. This was their northern country, to them 
the northern last end of their domain. Their 
lands stretched away to the south along all the 
gulf shores of Acadia and in their fancy their 



70 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

hunting grounds were of the shape of a man, 
head and arms toward the south, and feet at the 
north. Hence, Gaspe — the end of their posses- 
sions. 

The Souriquois were ever few in Gasp^, and are 
to-day almost gone from the great peninsula; 
and yet in the more populous parts of their ancient 
domain they are more in number than in the days 
of Cartier and Champlain. More than four 
thousand are now enumerated in the 58 reserva- 
tions which extend all the way from Cape Breton 
to Bonaventure County. Father LeClercq, late 
in the 1600's, after six years of labor among 
the Micmacs of Gasp4, felt so depressed over the 
outcome of his labors for their conversion that 
he besought his superior for permission to leave 
this field. With the utmost reluctance the natives 
gave up the little that they seem to have had of 
their natural religion. And yet, as far back as 
1610, all the Micmacs at the south, to whom the 
sovereignty of the Grand Chief Membertou 
extended, had accepted the Frenchman's Chris- 
tianity and been baptized into the faith. 



THE PERC£ MOUNTAINS 71 

The Vision on ML Ste Anne 

Ongwe, Chief of the Gaspesian Souriquois, 
had returned with his people from the winter 
encampment about the far headwaters of the 
St. John. Half buried beneath the snow, their 
skin-covered cabins had comfortably withstood 
the season's downfall, and the hunt had brought 
forth abundance of food and clothing for all the 
small flock. An early breakdown of the snows 
was probable, a few bright days had softened them, 
loosed the ice-setting of the streams, and so with 
their peltries the chief had led them back over the 
trail to the shore much earlier than it was his wont 
to abandon winter quarters. It lacked but httle 
of the Equinox, to these worshipers of the Sun 
the most solemn feast of the year. It was seldom 
that this day of ceremonial found Ongwe and his 
people so near the coast and at the foot of the 
Perc6 Mountain. The trail had been long and 
heavy, for the raquettes sank deep into the soft- 
ening, sloppy snow. But there was no spoken 
expression of weariness, a serene contentment 



72 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

lay in the vivacious eyes which looked out from 
under the stolid brow of the Sagamo. 

It was the feast of the Sun, and long before that 
orb had flushed the eastern sky with the faintest 
suggestion of his approach, while the stars still 
shone with the white fire of burning steel and the 
shimmering sheets of the aurora lit up the ce- 
lestial vault, the chieftain aroused his people 
from their shortened slumber. Sire, seer and lad, 
maid, matron and babe on back, led by Ongwe, 
leaving their encampment under the shelter of 
the sea-wall, trailed slowly through the unbroken 
snow of the spruce woods up the long northern 
slope of the great mountain. The difficult passage 
was made in silence save for the crackling of the 
twigs and the sharp creak of the frost. Half 
way up, the gentler slope was passed and the 
steep plateau towered over them. Turning east- 
ward the chieftain saw the sun-star, herald of 
the coming god, blazing his course above the 
horizon and a low word of urgent command re- 
newed their upward progress. The last hard slopes 
were finally passed and the gentle floor of the 



THE PERCE MOUNTAINS 73 

summit was reached as the reddening east be- 
tokened the coming of the equinoctial sun. 

Standing at the crest and on the edge of the 
sharp cHff, his people behind him, the Sagamo 
stood attent. The increasing glow in the east 
outlined the distant Bonaventure Island and 
silhouetted the Perce Rock. Over the glistening 
water, beyond the frozen channel, the soft reful- 
gence deepened into a golden orange. The fires 
burned, the red cliffs of the mountain caught the 
warmer rays and the shadowy outhne of the sea 
cliffs at the south became fixed. An arc of gold 
breached the horizon. As it reached the eye of the 
chieftain, he threw from him his cloak of castor, 
his deerskin shirt and clout, loosed from his feet 
the mooseskin moccasins. Naked as he was born, 
and rigid as if dead, he stood in the presence of the 
Lord of Day. While the sun traversed the skyline, 
and till its lowest arc rebounded from the lingering 
clasp of the sea, he stood as if carved from the 
mountain. When it had cleared itself and the 
day had begun, the chieftain lifted up his arms 
extended wide apart in adoration, and cried aloud, 



74 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

Ho! Ho! Ho!* After him the little multitude 
behind thus saluted the god of hght and warmth 
and life, herald of a new summer. With uplifted 
arms, he poured forth his supplication to the 
divine arc for his people and himself, bowing him- 
self low as he prayed for the safe-keeping of their 
wives and children, for triumph over their enemies, 
for success in the hunt and fishing, for the pres- 
ervation of their life and a long posterity. 

The eyes of the chieftain now yielding before 
the darts of the Sun god, he drew his discarded 
garments about him and then gazed in silence over 
the wondrous scene spread out before him. The 
day had risen clear as ice, and the first of the sun's 
rays drove before them a gauze of fog which 
lifting, tinged with carmine the thin blue Une of 
the distant Forillon, its wavy summits, its bluff 
headland and towering obelisk. In the nearer 
distance, across the northern bay. Point St. Peter 
and its island took on the dark strength of the full 



* Father LeClercq, who found a few of the sun worshipers 
left among the Gaspesian Indians, says that this was the 
simple salutation to the rising sun- 



1 



THE PERCfi MOUNTAINS 75 

day while the shimmering light of waters danced 
gleefully against the ice floes. Straight down 
between his feet lay the triangle of Perce headed by 
Mont Joli, flanked at the left by Cape Barre and 
at the right by Cape Canon; the battue piled high 
with broken ice and at its end the crested cliff of 
the Pierced Rock. Bonaventure guarded the open 
waters, robed in her snow and verdure. His gaze 
swept to the south, over the head of Cape Blanc, 
along the distant coves of Beaufils to Cape d'Espoir, 
and on beyond in the dimmest distance the eye 
could catch the faintly penciled outline of Miscou 
and Shippegan, forty miles away. The wondrous 
beauty and primitive grandeur of the scene bathed 
in the effulgence of the new sun awoke a response 
in kind from the breast of this child of the soil. 
He turned his face inland toward the flat-topped 
mountains which sweep to their higher summits 
in the wilderness behind and roll up one beyond 
another until their curves are merged into the sky, 
but started with a throb and half suppressed bound 
as his eyes confronted, on a projecting plateau till 
now concealed in the half light by a thin spruce 



76 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

thicket, — a cross, towering high above the under- 
growth. Ah, yes! the cross; it was the good 
missioner's symbol of life, as the sun was his. 
Had not he and his people helped to bear it up the 
mountain and to plant it there? It was their 
white brother's wish and ought he not — he threw 
a quick glance upon his followers. Their eyes, too, 
were fixed upon the cross, some with indifference, 
but here and there an arm dropping from forehead 
to breast had silently and almost surreptitiously 
repeated the symbol — the sign manual of the new 
religion. Turning from it, Ongwe let his gaze 
again linger over the brilliant tapestry of sea and 
shore and covering his eyes with his hand raised 
his face once more to the dazzling sun, seeming to 
bathe himself in its warmth and glory, then took 
his way down the trail with no more concern for 
the white man's cross. 

He * 4: 4: * 

The land of Perc6 is changing its level. I am 
under obligations to many of the older residents 
for information which leads to the inference that 
it is rising at the north and falling at the south. 



THE PERCfi MOUNTAINS 77 

Fifty or sixty years ago the water had come so 
high upon the beaches that it became necessary 
to abandon the drying stages nearest the shorehne 
and the pickets of these old stages have been 
found again in digging away for new in these later 
years, until now the shoremen say they could 
rebuild without danger on the site of the old stages. 
Traschy 's reef off Cape Barre, the reefs of Mt. Joli 
and the Quay or reefs of the Robin beach are all, in 
the judgment of the venerable residents, further 
above the water than a half century ago. The 
battue from Mt. Joli to the Rock was formerly 
easily passed at high water, even by barges, but 
now only on the rarest occasions. Logan's journal 
speaks of being able to reach the Rock by the bar 
from Mt. Joli only at the ebb of some spring tide. 
The coast thus was on its way down in the more 
than a half century back, then stopped and since 
has come the other way. The period of this 
oscillation has been of too brief duration to permit 
the formation of beaches during the depression, so 
that there are no raised terraces which indicate 
the present elevation. On the other hand, the 



78 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

beaches toward Cape Blanc have been cut to 
pieces within about the same period and the waves 
are rapidly shearing back the rock walls, so here at 
least the coast is falling. 

***** 

/ There is no place on all the Atlantic seaboard 
where geological revolutions have been so extraor- 
dinary as at Perc6. It is as though, to put the 
whole long story into brevier, a great arch or fold of 
the rocks, — a majestic ridge of the ancient Appala- 
chian mountains reaching high above the summits 
of to-day, had broken and collapsed, leaving its 
fragments where now project the shore cliffs and 
the ridge that surrounds Ste Anne. Over the 
ragged edges of this sunken fold, the sea afterward 
laid down the coarse red pudding stones of Ste 
Anne and Bonaventure, and they in their turn 
were lifted quietly out of the water to their present 
heights. 



THE ROCKS AND THE PEOPLE 

Geology and Settlement — The Mines; their history — Petroleum; 
its promises and disappointments — The Submarine Moun- 
tains and the Fishing 

One seeks in the geology of a country a key to its 
settlements. Original entry into a new country 
may be largely by accident, and is often a com- 
plete misfit between the capacity of the settler 
and the possibilities of the region, but in time the 
growth and business of the population come into 
direct dependence upon its geology. They assume 
an equilibrium and in the expression or main- 
tenance of this balance lies the success of the 
individual. Geology is a hard master. If the 
settler does not adjust himself to it, or if by reason 
of an inadequate training he can not, geology will 
starve him out. 

The controlling impulse in all the early voyages 

to the New World was two-fold, to find a western 

passage to India and the discovery of gold. Gold 
79 



80 THE HEART OF GASPE 

was among the earliest quests upon the Gaspe 
coast, and though it was never found, yet the next 
best thing, silver, was, mixed with lead. Amongst 
the earliest records of Gaspe is the discovery of 
silver-bearing lead at Little Gaspe on the Forillon, 
and an organized effort was made from France to 
exploit it. Even the Jesuit missionaries seem to 
have got into it and I fear were ''trimmed," for 
the ''Relations" record with some pathos the 
fact that in 1663 Father Balloquet returned from 
Gaspe not having found his mine "good." And 
even in spite of this report, the Intendant Talon 
and the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales in 
1665, sent Frangois Doublet with 40 miners 
down to these little veins, and the ancient tailings 
of their work can be seen to-day covered by the 
refuse of later ventures, all of which have had 
the same outcome. The venerable Mr. Price, of 
Little Gaspe, has told me that till lately he had had 
in his possession the primitive tools used by the 
French in their mining operations here two hun- 
dred and fifty years ago. These lead-bearing 
veins, cutting straight across the mountains along 



THE ROCKS AND THE PEOPLE 81 

lines of slight displacement of the rock masses, are 
of frequent occurrence along the little peninsula, 
and there are ''mines" at Grande Greve and St. 
George's Cove. It is evidently of the Little Gaspe 
mine that Denys speaks with so much emphasis 
and detail: ''One league further up the river 
[Gaspe Bay] is a cove where one can land. On 
the high ground is the place where it has been 
hoped to find a lead mine, and Messieurs de la 
Compagnie have paid the cost on the representa- 
tions of persons who had brought some fragments 
that were veritably good, but they are only from 
some little veins that run over the rock and which 
the force of the sun has purified, for the whole 
mine is only antimony and that not very abundant. 
I have known of it for more than twenty years.* 
If it had been good I should not have let it be idle. 
I have found plenty of persons who were ready to 
undertake on shares what I have seen, but I was 
never willing, knowing well that I should deceive 
them and that is something I am incapable of 
doing unless I were myself deceived without 
* That would be at least as early as 1652. 



82 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

knowing it." Most noble seigneur! Les Messieurs 
de la Compagnie were let in for a cosy sum about 
two hundred and fifty years ago, and in these 
later years are again these "mines" being "pro- 
moted." Between these dates no one knows how 
many times these old veins have been rediscovered. 

Had nature been less wise Gaspe might have 
been a great oil field, with to-day its distant reaches 
dotted with derricks and a row of palaces of cap- 
tains of industry extending back from Gaspe Basin 
to the Mississippi.* If the hopes of fifty years were 
realized and oleaginous money had been pumped 
out of the earth, Gaspe would ere this have lost its 
bloom. The story of the hunt for petroleum in this 
region is, I believe, that of the most tenacious and 
costly pursuit of an ignis fatuus known in the 
history of oil development. Indeed for a half 
century the golden goal has seemed ever at hand, 
and to-day never so far away. 

Oil was found by the early geologists and known 
before their coming, oozing from the sandstones 

* A little stream about thirty-five miles back from the Basin 
where the oil operations have been most actively carried on. 



THE ROCKS AND THE PEOPLE 83 

on the south shore of Gaspe Bay, particularly- 
near Tar Point and Point St. Peter, where one 
of the rock folds emerges at the water's edge. 
In 1863 Logan published his final geological re- 
port on this country, and this was followed by 
a special report on the petroleum by Hunt in 1865. 
In Pye's Gaspe views published in 1866, was one 
of the oil derricks in the spruce forest at Sandy 
Beach accompanied by a glowing account of the 
prospective development of the several petroleum 
companies even then on the ground, they and the 
whole project supported by names of scientific 
distinction. This was near the period of rapid 
development of the petroleum -production in Penn- 
sylvania, and though the anticlinal theory of oil 
accumulation had not been formulated so early, 
yet private enterprise began the drilling for oil 
along the inland extension of these anticlines into 
the region about the upper reaches of the York 
river. From then until a few years ago companies 
have been organized to obtain this product and 
companies syndicated; new companies represent- 
ing other capital appeared and were syndicated. 



84 THE HEART OF GASP£ 

Many wells have been driven, some of them to 
the great depth of over three thousand feet; re- 
fineries have been erected at enormous expense; 
all apparatus for drilling and refining had to be 
brought in by water from the States or Europe 
and hauled over rough roads through the wilder- 
ness for twenty to thirty-five miles. All the labor 
and all the expense has been ever in the hope of 
finding oil. The refineries were built to refine 
the oil it was hoped to find, not oil that had been 
found, and new wells were sunk, not to find more 
oil, but only in the hope of finding some oil. The 
successive managers of the companies have lived 
in enviable magnificence at the Basin in the same 
hope of discovery. Nothing has seemed to me, 
a passing observer, so out of harmony with the 
spirit of the country as this display of prosperity 
with only a bubble behind it. Yet it has, I believe, 
all been fully justified. The sandstone into which 
the wells have gone are saturated with petroleum, 
and there must indeed be an enormous total 
amount of this material in the strata. But nature 
seems to have made no proper provision for its 



. 



THE ROCKS AND THE PEOPLE 85 

accumulation. Practice on the theory of storage 
in pools parallel to the anticlines, which has been 
so fruitful in other Appalachian oil fields, has 
here been without result. The folds are there 
and their troughs into which the oil might settle 
by gravity, but somehow it has got away. All 
external conditions for extensive production are 
absolutely favorable and attractive. The total 
product of all these years is the occasional brief 
gush, the little that has accumulated in the bottom 
of the wells and been pumped out. I have been 
in no position to form an explanation of the real 
cause of this condition, but it is my suspicion that 
through cracks and joints in the bottom of the 
troughs the oil which might have accumulated 
therein has gone on further down and out of the 
reach of the drill. Gaspe as an oil field is deranged 
though very seductive. 

So Gaspe can not make a home for miners of 
any kind, for there are no mineral deposits of any 
present moment in it. Gasp6 Basin, being a mag- 
nificent harbor, became a busy little port of pas- 
sage. Its gentle eastern and southern slopes have 



86 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

made some small farming possible, while its rivers 
have been the nurses of a lumber trade. 

But it is the submarine geology of Gasp6 that 
fixed the business of its people from the dawn of 
its civiUzed history. Its seas are washing the de- 
voured continents, and their shallow rocky bot- 
toms are the home of the cod. It is not in the 
deeper waters that the search for cod goes on. 
The fishermen of the Forillon do not spend much 
time in the waters of the Bay, where the shore 
falls away abruptly to considerable depths, but 
they betake themselves around Shiphead and to 
the foot of the Bon Ami cUffs, where a broad 
sunken platform of rock is the resort of the fish; 
the Bonaventure Island men rarely go far from 
their own shores and while the fishermen of St. 
Peter, Malbay and Perc^ may get as far as the 
American Bank, the cod from off the long shore 
stretches of vanished rocks are the best, smaller 
indeed, but quickest caught and soonest cured. 
The ocean through countless ages hanamered 
down the mountains of this Gaspesian world and 
brought their heads beneath its waves. Had not 



THE ROCKS AND THE PEOPLE 87 

the rocky coast been thus exposed to the ceaseless 
play of the northeast storms, no suitable habitat 
would have been made for the cod. Few spots in 
the world are so prolific in these fish as this region 
of drowned mountains, this submerged tip of the 
great Appalachian moimtain system. The ancient 
unceasing warfare between sea and mountain has 
cut out for Gaspe its occupation for all time. Its 
history and its civilization, its stories of fortunes 
acquired, or oftener of meager livings wrested 
and wrung from the sea, all have their origin, like 
the picturesqueness of its scenery, in the geology 
of the country. "Que voulez-vous!" exclaims the 
Abb6 Ferland. "It is the land of the cod. By 
your eyes and by your nose, by your tongue and 
your gorge, and by your ears as well, you are soon 
convinced that in the Gaspesian Peninsula the cod 
forms the basis of aliment and amusement, of 
business and conversation, of regrets and hopes, 
of fortune and of life, and I venture to say, of 
society itself." 



BONA VENTURE ISLAND 

The charm of the island — The Child of Ste Anne — Early his- 
tory — The Janvrins — Captain Duval, privateer — Remark- 
able bird roosts — Relics of the past — Mauger house — The 
golden jugs of Bonaventure 

Bonne Aventure, it was to the fishermen of the 
1600's. I found it so too. For them the island 
sheltered the wind driven headlands of Perce 
where it lies off a league or so, and in their day 
there was fishing so extraordinary as to excite 
the notice of the missioners passing back and forth 
from the establishments at Quebec and Tadoussac 
to their stations on Newfoundland. For me, a 
sympathetic interloper, Bonaventure has been 
more an emotion than an island. Much of the 
charm of an island lies in its unconscious atmos- 
phere of supremacy and autonomy. Its sea-girt 
boundaries make for independence, if it is un- 
trammeled by ties of commercial fraternity, cables, 
signal towers, boat lines; if out of the current of 



BONA VENTURE ISLAND 89 

traffic it makes for the dignity and sovereignty of 
solitude. 

From the top of Mt. Ste Anne at Perc6, which 
looks down over Bonaventure, commanding its 
whole length, the island is an oval green velvet 
rug with a fringe of red where the ruddy rocks 
project along the edges beyond the verdure. Ste 
Anne commands the island in truth, for Bonaven- 
ture was really once a part of her and in days long 
gone, broke away from her bluff front and lies now, 
the remnant which the seas have left, while Ste Anne 
shows to every passer the great scar of the island's 
birth. Save that the tide rushes hard through the 
sea channel that separates them, she still keeps her 
grip on her offspring. Off on the island front which 
faces the Gulf the cliffs rise sheer to four and five 
hundred feet while the water at their base is bold 
to fifty fathoms. Thomas Pye, in 1866, describ- 
ing his picture of the island, said, ''It appears as 
though it had been uphove from the bottom of the 
Gulf," and the Gaspe artist was near the truth, for 
so it has, and it stands much as Ste Anne herself, 
bold front to the east, sloping down to the west. 



90 THK HKART OK C.ASrfi 

Wlicn \\\c fog rushes down ami olianges all the 
greens of the island to blue i2;rays, even then 
through the fringes there are still red flashes from 
its clitTs back to those of its mother mountain. 
Then its little life is more than ever veiled from 
the rest of the world. 

AMien the Janvrins came to Bonaventure to es- 
tablish the first "sedentary" fishing there, branch- 
ing out from their earlier station at Grande Grdve 
of about 1708, they took possession of the one 
beach on all the place where such operations could 
be carried on. It is a very little beach indeed for 
the operations of a large establishment as this 
has grown to be during the century past, but 
Bonaventure is not an island of beaches. Here 
and there from the middle of the west shore to 
its south end are little patches of sand, none much 
larger than the Lazy beach near the south point, 
but at the fishing beach where the establishment 
for long 3'ears now has done business imder the 
name of Le Bouthillier Brothers, the ground is 
shaved off gradually from the higher level, and so 
the fishhouses, flakes and stores work back up the 



BONAVENTURE ISLAND 91 

rocky slopes. In those da} s of the Janvrias every 
rriari's hand was aj^ainst i'rance, the seas were free 
and its cargoes belonged to hinri who could take and 
hold them. Here the Janvrias with privateers' 
commissions fitted out more than one craft under 
their letters of marque and here among the great 
blocks of fallen rock heaped up into a rough shore 
line full of caverns and dark retreats, any priva- 
teer might well Imve stored his secrets. Indeed it 
Is not for me to say, with the legends of the coast 
ringing in my ears, tliat these sea caverns have 
not held their stores of plate and louis and Hquors. 
The old tales of these sequestered doings which 
still hover thirough the Perce atmosphere have a 
delirious though rather intangible fascination. 
You piece the frayed threads together, gathering 
some from tPus mouth, others from the venerable 
gossips, and weave them together into a plaiLsible 
romance only to have some one who knows or the 
bearer of the names you have made familiar wdth 
denounce the whole tale as a fabrication. Still 
it is l-iard to escape the notion that in all the smoke 
of these mysteries there Is not some fire, and the 



92 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

pretty mysteries make good stories and are their 
own reward. At any rate one truly real history 
of privateering days survives and is so often told 
wrong that it is well to keep it alive as it was told 
by Thomas Pye nearly fifty years ago. It is the 
story of Captain Peter John Duval. Duval com- 
manded the Vulture, a small, 100-ton lugger- 
rigged craft with four guns and a crew of twenty- 
seven men. Pye thought she was owned by the 
Janvrins who fitted out privateers both here and 
in the island of Jersey, but I think it doubtful. 
I have on the mantel before me the old Captain's 
cutlass, its gold-plated brass mountings and its 
beautifully damascened and inlaid blade carrying 
the royal arms and the monogram of George III 
heavily worked into the hilt, — a fine blade which 
must have come directly with his commission from 
the king. The Vulture, was the terror of the 
French coast from San Malo to the Pyrenees and 
true to her name, hovered like a bird of prey along 
the shores, taking vessel after vessel. So severely 
did the Port of Bayonne suffer from her depreda- 
tions that the merchants of the place organized a 



BONA VENTURE ISLAND 93 

joint stock company with the purpose of putting 
an end to their tormentor. A brig of 180 tons 
was purchased, with 16 guns and a crew of 80 
men, and thus disguised as a merchantman with 
her gun ports covered, shpped out into the dark 
of the night and into the track of the waiting Vul- 
ture. A chase followed, the little lugger over- 
hauled the brig, ran alongside and demanded sur- 
render, when at once the disguise was thrown off, 
the ports were opened and Captain Duval found 
himself overtopped by a wholly superior enemy. 
Nevertheless running close under the French- 
man's bows he got his little ship below her firing 
line and then poured into her all the grape shot 
he had aboard, cutting her to pieces and killing 
half her crew. In despair the brig broke away 
for harbor with the intrepid captain in pursuit 
but falling night robbed him of his prey. This 
story came to Thomas Pye from Sheriff Vibert of 
Perce who had known Captain Duval and his first 
officer. 

After his hardy life on the seas was over Duval 
came to Bonaventure, purchased a large part of 



94 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

the island and there he ended his days. To-day 
the grave of this sturdy privateer Hes on Cap-au- 
Canon, just across the channel. 

There may be to-day ten families of human be- 
ings living along the wavering road that runs from 
the Le Bouthillier station to the south end of the 
island; perhaps in all thirty or forty people are 
domiciled there — of course we do not count the 
fishermen from Shippegan and Caraquet there for 
the season's work. In all, the inhabitants are far 
fewer than in the earliest and later days when the 
island could maintain a church. 

But on the high cliffs of the north and east, 
alined on the horizontal sandstone ledges in ranks 
one above the other, are the legitimate and an- 
cient aristocracy of the place — the gannets, murres, 
kittiwakes and puffins which nest on these cliffs 
by thousands. The red rock walls are fairly white 
with the brilliant silver gannets while their su- 
periority in number and the majesty of their size 
give a color tone to the whole colony, the grayer 
kittiwakes, the occasional murre and the diminu- 
tive puffins hid away in the rock crevices adding 



BONA VENTURE ISLAND 95 

only to the census of the settlement rather than 
to its unpressiveness. This is really a wonderful 
bird roost, equaled nowhere in the number of gan- 
nets even on the Bird Rocks out in the Gulf. 
There the association of species is the same 
and I am not at all sure that the entire bird popu- 
lation of that well known resort may not be equaled 
on this island. If the Bonaventure roost has at- 
tracted less the attention of bird students, it may 
be that its inaccessibility has protected it from 
the inroads of the Audubon Society members, for 
the steep cliffs can not be scaled from below ex- 
cept for a httle way and by the most venture- 
some, nor reached from the summit unless one is 
wilhng to be let down over the cliffs by a rope; 
so that even the most enthusiastic bird ''lover" 
could hardly get a good shot at these beautiful 
and harmless waterfowl or succeed except at great 
hazard in carrying off enough eggs to seriously 
deplete the potential population. Thus protected 
from attack both above and below, and rather 
too remote to invite the visitor who is quite 
likely to hear Httle of this amazing spot from the 



96 THE HEART OF GASPE 

people ashore, the settlement is in a way to keep 
its ancient races which have made this the home 
of their productive days for untold centuries. 

Singularly enough and for reasons best known 
to themselves, the birds divide into two distinct 
settlements, the smaller near the north as one 
approaches from the west, but each community 
comprises all the different species which enter 
into the composition of the population. The 
greater and more marvelous display of bird life 
is further around to the east where the rock walls 
are drifted white with plumage and are vibrant 
with screamage. I fancy that these two settle- 
ments must have been long ago one and con- 
tinuous, till some fall of rock carried away the 
projecting ledges between, and sheared down the 
cliff face so that nesting room was hard to find. 
The bare space looks rough enough to-day to ac- 
commodate the nesters, but if such a disturbance 
of arrangements occurred long ago we may re- 
member that the force of acquired habit is 
strong and, once adjusted to their nesting stations, 
the citizens of the colonies, big with intent, re- 



BONAVENTURE ISLAND 97 

turn each year to their famihar and long used 
ledges. 

No ** lover" has yet given us an explanation of 
the pecuhar associations of the waterfowl on this 
coast. Over on the sununit of Perce Rock, four 
miles away, only the herring gull and the cor- 
morant breed or have bred within the history of 
man. I doubt if the most temerarious gannet 
would dare so much as to alight on the Rock in 
the face of its feathered citizenry of other per- 
suasions. The birds of this He Perce are no friends 
to the fishermen whether of cod or salmon, and 
yet the people of the Perce coast would be bereft 
indeed should this part of their population vanish. 
Their coming in the spring is the signal of the 
return of Ufe in the boats and on the flakes and 
when they go late in autumn, winter is on its way 
down and if the fall fishing is not then over, the 
men certainly wish it were. The gabble of the 
birds at early morning and their crooning over 
their young during the night are sounds that the 
dwellers ashore have always heard and have 
learned to love. So that the presence of the birds 



98 THE HEART OF GASPE 

and their companionship has been a compensa- 
tion and indulgence for all the sins of commission 
for which they come in for hearty rounds of harm- 
less abuse. 

Over on the rocks at Cape Bon Ami beyond the 
Shiphead light and back of Grande Greve, is an- 
other nesting place of these gulls and cormorants, 
but the population here is small, even though 
absolutely removed from the disturbing presence 
of men. Isolation favors the citizens but the feed- 
ing grounds are a long way off, up the St. John at 
Douglastown, or up the York and Dartmouth at 
Gaspe, flights of ten or fifteen miles. All the birds 
in those rivers roost on the Bon Ami cliffs and 
it is a pretty sight toward nightfall to see them 
wending their way homeward, the gulls singly or 
in straggling pairs, the cormorants in V-shaped 
ranks, straight over the Grande Greve hills in 
an unerring line, guided by a sense bequeathed 
to them by ancestors which have roosted on these 
ragged cUffs since the days of Adam. Inheritance 
of habit enduring the changes in the cliffs which 
the pounding of the sea through the ages has 




PERCE. SPREAD OF FISH ON THE OLD FLAKES BUILT OF BEECH 
PICKETS AND COVERED WITH SPRUCE TWIGS 




BONULNTIHF IsLVND LL rROU-AUX-MARfiOTS, OR GANNET LEDGES 
PART OF ONE LEDGE SHOWING OVER 400 BIRDS 

This is the best picture that has been made of these inaccessible cliffs 
Taken by F. M. Chapman 



BONA VENTURE ISLAND 99 

brought about, is the reason why the birds still 
cling to these primeval homes. 

One can come to the bird roosts on Bonaven- 
ture by chmbing from the western beach along a 
dubious trail through the spruce, gathering, if he 
will, pepinos and blueberries in the Uttle clearings, 
perhaps strawberries on the diminutive pastures, 
and he will eventually reach some outlook where 
his eyes can enfilade the rows of birds as they sit 
in tiers on their rock ledges watching the eternal 
play of the waves spread out on the watery stage 
before them. 

Only a little part of the island is given over to 
human interests, to the few families scattered 
along the western shore. All the rest is the repub- 
lic of the birds and the spruce. Yet even this 
little isolated spot has left its record in history, 
aside from the romantic traditions which hover 
over the days of the Janvrin freebooters. 

In the time of Father LeClercq on the Perc6 
coast there were so many French fishermen en- 
gaged at Bonaventure during the season that a 
church and a hospice were built on the island. 



100 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

This was the church of St. Claire and was blas- 
phemed and burned by the same ''accursed Bas- 
tonnais," who destroyed St. Peter's at Perce in 
1690. That was in the days before the sedentary 
fishing, but Bonaventure has seen a larger human 
population than it possesses to-day, for in the days 
of the Janvrins and later there was again a church 
on the island, now long gone. The old storehouses 
of the fishing company which has passed down the 
years with changes of proprietors but with few 
of modes or indeed of buildings, contain strange 
relics of the past; piles of ancient fishing gear, 
venerable cod hooks, kedge anchors of odd shape, 
tally sticks for the fishermen who couldn't count, 
innumerable iron lanterns, ancient pistols and 
in the store itself among the old stock, brass can- 
dlesticks, an occasional poke bonnet and titbits 
of clothing of a former day. 

Alongside the fishing station, when I first knew 
the island, stood its most ancient house, then the 
home of Philip Mauger. I suppose it must have 
dated from the days of the Janvrins at least, for 
it had been built by Philip Mauger's grandfather, 



BONAVENTURE ISLAND 101 

a sailor out from Jersey, and Philip was at least 
sixty when I knew him. It was a long, low house 
of one story, its straight ridge pole dividing its 
roof unequally so that the narrow part sloped 
forward and its hinder part stretched back in a 
broad sweep almost to the ground. I had come 
over to the island to see its rocks and its birds, but 
attracted by the hoary antiquity of this house I 
had found myself suddenly possessed of a thirst 
which was excuse enough to implore relief at its 
latched but lockless door. 

One must take his chances on the water along 
this coast, — one must always take some risks in 
this life — but poison would be delicious when 
offered with such gentle hospitality as was the 
perfectly wholesome water when I entered the 
vast hall, which served the purpose of living room 
and kitchen. The bare beams, rich in the brown 
of many smoky years, stood all exposed about the 
walls, at one side and the other were doors leading 
I knew not whither, but with impertinent curiosity, 
wanted to know. 

"Please come in," was my quiet welcome — an 



102 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

ill assorted stranger with hammer in hand and 
an odd looking bag on his back was something 
worth inquiring into, and with complacency drop- 
ping my gear I entered the parlor. Mrs. Mauger 
had responded to my knock and Mr. Mauger 
soon came in to see, and there we sat for a little 
while, I anticipating their natural curiosity by 
frankly telling them my business on the coast, and 
then without offense quietly turning the conversa- 
tion to a more interesting topic, themselves, their 
home and their history. I recall this incident 
with the more pleasure now that both Mr. and 
Mrs. Mauger are gone and much of the old house, 
probably the oldest on all the coast, has been 
torn away. On the mantel over the fire-place 
stood a row of Staffordshire figures, among some 
sea shells from distant lands and a few photo- 
graphs of the ''boys" who had gone out from this 
place into the world. Hanging on the wall above 
were two "sailor's rolls," dough-pin shaped affairs 
of white glass, decorated with sailors' mottoes and 
suspended from their ends or handles. I have 
never seen them elsewhere, but they were dear 



BONA VENTURE ISLAND 103 

to the sailor's heart and had been brought from 
some English port by the founder of the family. 

On the walls were a few pictures framed in shells, 
a shelf in the corner carried a luster jug, and in 
the corner was a cupboard, but darkened with 
solid doors. And so as we sat the conversation 
quietly turned itself to the objects about the room, 
their history and the possibility of there being, 
perhaps, other such things in the house. Yes, 
there were some old dishes out from England that 
had belonged to grandfather, if you would care to 
see; they are in the cupboard; but it is hoped you 
will excuse the appearance of the cupboard for 
things are not in very good order and — the cup- 
board doors open on tiers of glass and china ar- 
ranged in the orderly neatness and cleanHness of 
the King's Own on parade. Old Davenport 8- 
sided plates were there and Liverpool plates with 
great black ships on them. As I fondled a tall 
pink Sunderland pepper box and as I look upon it 
now, there is Mrs. Mauger's gentle voice — " Please 
keep it, won't you? " A few pieces of luster were 
scattered on the shelves among the other things of 



104 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

more modern date. Those cupboard doors were 
slow in closing but as though the good housewife 
had exposed her gods too long to profane view 
they suddenly went together. But there was an- 
other pair of doors at the bottom of the cupboard 
and from behind them, opening reluctantly, came, 
in response to Mr. Mauger's inquiry, "grand- 
father's jug," a huge pitcher, of nearly two gallons 
hold, garnished marvelously about the throat and 
long fine spout with purple gold and its great belly 
belted with broad banded loops of golden pink 
enclosing flower encircled snatches of rime and a 
green wreathed picture of the iron bridge over the 
Wear at Sunderland, and this majestic jug had 
neither chip nor craze on all its capacious body. 
Full to the brim with simples wrapped carefully 
in papers, these unwonted contents were soon 
poured out on the floor so that the stranger, now 
well at home, could the better survey the propor- 
tions of this golden jug. I had never seen its 
equal, and after some experience with such things 
have still to see it. My exclamations of apprecia- 
tion were unspoken. Calmly and intensely its 



I 



I 



BONAVENTURE ISLAND 105 

majestic form and brilliant though hideous attrac- 
tions were surveyed. Calmly and deliberately the 
simples were gathered together and replaced and 
without expressed emotion the ancient piece was 
put back again in its corner of the cupboard. 

The visit was now over. With sincere expres- 
sions of good will on both sides I withdrew, and 
now this fine old relic of early hospitality on the 
island looks down from its shelf as I write this 
simple tale. 

Just across the narrow road lived another 
Sunderland jug — so Mr. Mauger told me — a man 
lived with it to be sure, but that mattered Uttle 
for the moment, till presently I found myself 
again the recipient of the hospitable courtesy of 
Mrs. Ned Buntline, her venerable father-in-law 
and soon of her hustling cordial husband. I after- 
ward learned to know Ned Buntline as a man 
without fear, of boundless energy and daring, and 
I have crossed the three-mile channel to the Island 
with him rowing lone handed a flat with four pas- 
sengers in a stiff, hard tide, piloted with an ar- 
tistic skill and vigor that seemed to give him as 



106 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

much joy in his work as it did courage to his rather 
beflustered supercargo. Yes, there was a Sunder- 
land jug in the house which the father had brought 
from the other side and would have wilHngly sur- 
rendered but Ned prized it and I would not ob- 
trude my rude arguments upon his sentiment. 
So the Buntline jug had to be left behind and 
now both father and son have crossed the great 
channel, the pretty young wife has left the coast 
and the old jug rests very appropriately among 
the treasures of Cap-au-Canon, just across on the 
mainland. And then there are two more of these 
objects of art from among the reliquiae of the 
fishing station, brilliant in their golden pink dress 
and capacious in proportions, fitting companions 
of the Mauger jug as they stand side by side, whis- 
pering, I fancy, to each other tales of the romantic 
days of the island. 

Bonaventure holds treasures of science, — in its 
birds, its plants of forest and field, and its great 
red rocks filled with the debris of rock beds still 
more ancient. A geologist will find here attractions 
of rather extraordinary kind as he knocks out' 



BONAVENTURE ISLAND 107 

of the strata pebbles and great bowlders contain- 
ing the fossils of vastly greater age than the rocks 
themselves. Indeed these great red pudding stones 
are largely composed of fragments washed from 
the ancient rock cliffs of Gaspe and rounded off 
by the waves of the same eternal sea that still 
pounds at its doors. 

Though I have wandered back and forth on the 
road along which the few houses are ranged run- 
ning down to the south point, inoffensively stop- 
ping in here and there to pass a word or catch a 
glimpse of cupboard and mantel, exchange good 
wishes freely or a little silver for an old product of 
the English potteries, Bonaventure, with all its 
ancient association with the missions and the fish- 
ing, its traditions of privateering, its geological 
problems and its feathered republic, remains to 
my memory, by grace of its most unexpected prod- 
uct, the Isle of the Golden Jugs. 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 

The French Fishermen — Jchan Denys — Cartier; stops at Perce; 
lands in Gaspe Bay — Champlain — The Recollets — Sir 
William Alexander — Kirk and De Roquemont — The 
Jesuits — Nicholas Denys — Return of the Recollets — Father 
LeClercq — St. Peter's Church at Perce — St. Claire's at 
Bonaventure Island — Fathers Didace, Joseph Denys and 
Jumeau at Perce — Burning of the Churches by the Eng- 
lish — Father Jumeau' s Letter — Location of both churches — 
Hovenden Walker and Jack Hill at Gaspe — Beauharnois — 
Governor Cox and American loyalists 

There is but scanty record of the beginnings of 
the settlements. The larger affairs of exploration 
and colonization touched these coasts only in pass- 
ing, and they leave much to the imagination for 
what may have happened. It is quite certain, 
however, that before the days of Cartier the coast 
had been reached by explorers. They knew of the 
Golfo Quadrato, the square gulf that lay back of 
the Terra Nova, though it took long for the charts 
to separate Newfoundland from the mainland and 
to locate the great water arms above and below, 
which lead back around into the Gulf. We know 

108 



J 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 109 

of the map said to have been made by Jehan Denys, 
a very famihar surname in the history of Gaspe, 
in 1506, which gives the outhne of the coast from 
Miscou to the St. Lawrence with comparative 
accuracy, and fringes it with an array of place 
names which are certainly of very much later 
date. It is such a map, says Winsor, as would 
have been quite possible for an intrepid and zeal- 
ous explorer of that day to have made, but its out- 
hne is so great an advance over any of con- 
temporary date as to bring even this part of it 
under suspicion. It is said that when Cartier first 
entered the Gulf, in 1534, he encountered a Nor- 
man fisher, and it was not long after his voyages 
that the fishing was regularly established on the 
coast, both by the Normans and the Biscayans. 
Portuguese explorers were along here, too, earlier 
than Cartier, but it remained for this lucky French- 
man to give a new domain to his king. That hot 
day in July, 1534, when he roasted in the Bay 
Chaleur and recorded the fact in its name, is the 
earliest definite date that has come down to us of 
the entry of the white man into Gaspesian waters. 



110 THE HEART OF GASPE 

More momentous far was that day later in the 
same month when he erected a cross on the beach 
at the head of Gaspe Bay, and took possession of 
the country in the name of the king. 

Coasting along the open headlands and below 
the Bay Chaleur he anchored for awhile in the 
channel off the Perce Rock, and then sailed on 
to the opening of Gaspe Bay, the Bale du Penouil 
of French writers of later date. We retell his 
story in the words of Hakluyt, for the Preacher's 
English is more picturesque than Lescarbot's 
French, from which it is derived. 

"BEing certified that there was no passage 
through the said Bay,* we hoised saile, and went 
from S. Martines Creeke vpon Sunday, being the 
12. of July, to goe and discouer further beyond 
the said Bay, and went along the sea coast East- 
ward about eighteene leagues, till we came to the 
Cape of Prato,t where we found the tide very 
great, but shallow ground, and the Sea stormie, 
so that we were constrained to draw toward shore, 
between the said Cape and an I Land | lying East- 

* Bay of Chaleur. 
t Perc6 Rock. 
t Bonaventure. 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 111 

ward, about a league from the said Cape, where 
we cast anker for that night. The next morning 
we hoised saile to trend the said coast about, 
which lyeth North Northeast. But there arose 
such stormie and raging winds against vs, that we 
were constrained to come to the place againe, from 
whence we were come: there did we stay all that 
day til the next that we hoised vp saile, and came 
to the middest of a riuer * fine or size leagues from 
the Cape of Prato Northward, and being ouver- 
thwart the said Riuer, there arose againe a con- 
trary winde, with great fogges and stormes. So 
that we were constrained vpon Tuesday, being 
the fourteenth of the Moneth, to enter into the 
riuer, and there did we stay till the sixteenth of 
the moneth looking for faire weather to come out 
of it : on which day being Thursday, the winde be- 
came so raging that one of our ships lost an anker, 
and we were constrained to goe vp higher into 
the riuer seuen or eight leagues, into a good har- 
borough and ground that we with our boates 
found out, and through the euill weather, tempest, 
and darkenesse that was, wee stayed in the saide 
harborough till the fine and twentieth of the 
moneth, not being able to put out: in the meane 
time wee sawe a great multitude of wilde men 
that were fishing for mackerels, whereof there is 
great store. Their boates were about 40, and the 
persons, what with men, women, and children, two 
* Gaspe Bay. 



112 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

hundred, which after they had hanted our com- 
pany a while, they came very famiharly with 
their boats to the sides of our ships. We gaue 
them kniues, combes, beads of glasse, and other 
trifles of small value, for which they made many 
signes of gladnesse, lifting their hands vp to heauen 
dancing and singing in their boates. These men 
may very well and truely be called Wilde, be- 
cause there is no poorer people in the world. For 
I thinke all that they had together, besides their 
boates and nets, was not worth fiue souce. They 
goe altogether naked sauing their priuities, which 
are couered with a little skinne, and certaine olde 
skinnes that they cast vpon them. Neither in 
nature nor in language doe they any whit agree 
with them which we found first: their heads be 
altogether sauen, except one bush of haire which 
they suffer to grow vpon the top of their crowne 
as long as a horse taile, and then with certaine 
leather strings binde it in a knot vpon their heads. 
They haue no other dwelhng but their boates, 
which they turne vpside downe, and vnder them 
they lay themselves all along vpon the bare ground. 
They eate their flesh almost raw, saue onely that 
they heat it a little vpon imbers of coales, so doe 
they their fish. Vpon Magdalens day we with 
our boates went to the bancks of the riuer, and 
freely went on shore among them, whereat they 
made many signs, and all their men in two or 
three companies began to sing and dance, seem- 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 113 

ing to be very glad of our coming. They had 
caused all the young women to flee into the wood, 
two or three excepted, that stayed with them, to 
ech of which we gaue a combe, and a little bell 
made of tinne, for which they were very glad, 
thanking our Captaine, rubbing his armes and 
breasts with their hands. Wlien the men saw vs 
giue something vnto those that had stayed, it 
caused al the rest to come out of the wood, to the 
end that they should haue as much as the others: 
These women are about twenty, who altogether 
in a knot fell vpon our Captaine, touching and 
rubbing him with their hands, according to their 
manner of cherishing and making much of one, who 
gaue to each of them a little Tinne Bell. . . . 
" VPon the 25 of the moneth, wee caused a faire 
high Crosse to be made of the height of thirty 
foote, which was made in the presence of many 
of them, vpon the point of the entrance of the sayd 
hauen, in the middest whereof we hanged vp a 
Shield with three Floure de Luces on it, and in 
the top was earned in the wood with Anticke, 
letters this posie, Vine le Roy de France. Then 
before them all we set it vpon the sayd point. 
They with great heed beheld both the making and 
setting it of vp. So soone as it was vp, we alto- 
gether kneeled downe before them, with our hands 
toward Heauen, yeelding God thankes: and we 
made signes vnto them, shewing them the Heauens, 
and that all our saluation dependeth onely on him 



114 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

which in them dwelleth: whereat they shewed 
a great admiration, looking first one at another, 
and then vpon the Crosse. And after wee were 
returned to our ships, their Captaine, clad with 
an old Beares skin, with three of his sonnes, and 
a brother of his with him, came vnto vs in one 
of their boates, but they came not so neere vs- 
as they were wont to doe: there he made a long 
Oration vnto vs, shewing vs the crosse we had set 
vp, and making a crosse with two fingers, then 
did he shew vs all the Countrey about vs, as if 
he would say that all was his, and that wee should 
not set vp any crosse without his leaue. His talke 
being ended, we shewed him an Axe, faining that 
we would giue it him for his skin, to which he lis- 
tened, for by little and little hee came neere our 
ships. One of our fellowes that was in our boate, 
tooke hold on theirs, and suddenly leapt into it, 
with two or three more, who enforced them to 
enter into our ships, whereat they were greatly 
astonished. But our Captain did straightwaies 
assure them, that they should haue no harme, nor 
any iniurie offred them at all, and entertained 
them very friendly, making them eate and drinke. 
Then did we shew them with signes, that the 
crosse was but onely set \'p to be as a light and 
leader which wayes to enter into the port, and 
that wee would shortly come againe, and bring 
good store of iron wares and other things, but 
that we would take two of his children with vs. 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 115 

and afterward bring them to the sayd port againe: 
and so wee clothed two of them in shirts, and 
coloured coates, with red cappes, and put about 
euery ones necke a copper chaine, whereat they 
were greatly contented; then gauve they their old 
clothes to their fellowes that went backe againe, 
and we gave to each one of those three that went 
backe, a hatchet, and some kniues, which made 
them very glad. After these were gone, and had 
told the news vnto their fellowes, in the after noone 
there came to our ships sixe boates of them, with 
fine or sixe men in euery one, to take their farewels 
of those two we had detained to take with vs, 
and brought them some fish, vttering many words 
which we did not vnderstand, making signes that 
they would not remoue the crosse we had set vp." 

Thus was the whole country, from that time 
to be known as New France, become the domain 
of the French King by this seizin on the shores of 
Gaspe. From Gaspe, Cartier sailed back to St. 
Malo, not stopping to enter the great waterway 
of the St. Lawrence, which he may well have be- 
Heved to lead to Cathay. On his return the next 
year to follow up this passage to the Indies, he 
did not stop at Gaspe even long enough to dis- 
embark the two young Indians whom he had 



116 THE HEART OF GASPE 

taken (the English say kidnapped) from Sandy 
Beach back with him to France. In the cen- 
tury that followed, the Gaspe coast was visited 
by the fishermen for the cod and mackerel, at 
first we may suppose occasionally by some ven- 
turer beyond the banks of Newfoundland, but 
by the middle of the sixteenth century probably 
regularly for the whole fishing season from May 
to November. They came from Normandy and 
St. Malo, Bordogne and many places along the 
Bay of Biscay, La Rochelle, Olonne and the 
Isle d'Yeu, but they were not settlers on the 
coast. We cannot tell the slender doings that 
were slowly making during all this time toward 
permanent occupation, but we may believe that 
the beaches were yearly dotted with the curing- 
houses and covered with the stages, flakes and the 
round mows of dried fish thatched with birch- 
bark held down by large stones as they were in 
the days of Nicolas Denys and as they are to- 
day. 

Up to the time of Champlain's voyage along 
the coast in 1603 and later, there was nothing to 



I 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 117 

invite the traveler for a longer stay than shelter 
at Gaspe harbor or wood and water at Perce. 

But if the character of the country failed to offer 
inducement to permanent settlement to farmer or 
fisherman, the souls of the natives did, and as early 
as 1610 it was proposed to the Jesuit superiors to 
estabhsh colonies for the purpose of disseminat- 
ing the gospel. Champlain, however, had a fond- 
ness for the Recollets; there was a Franciscan 
monastery in his home town of Brouage, and so 
the missions in New France were begun by the 
four whom he brought out from Brouage in 1615. 
Unmoved by motives of material gain, but in 
zealous obedience to the divine command, Euntes 
ergo docete omnes gentes, these knights of the faith 
were soon to break ground in this wilderness of 
Gaspe. 

Who it was and at what spot he began his labors 
our records do not show, but the Relations say 
that the date was 1619, and as Perce was the best 
known station on the coast, where most of the 
vessels from France dropped anchor on their way 
in and out, and the French fishermen resorted 



118 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

in greatest numbers, it seems likely that here the 
work commenced. 

Trouble was now brewing between the two 
governments which claimed supremacy over all 
this country. The English were settling in Cape 
Breton. Sir William Alexander, who had received 
from James I. patents to all the territory as far 
as Cape Gaspe, was endeavoring to spread the 
settlements in this direction, and was scatter- 
ing new place names along the coast. With the 
modesty of a Joshua he called all this country 
from Acadia to the St. Lawrence, New Alexandria. 
But New Alexandria was not to be of long dura- 
tion, nor was the Recollet mission in Gaspe, for 
the war between the French and English soon 
came on and the fathers abandoned their work in 
1624. It was in 1628 that Admiral Kirk of the 
English fleet overhauled the French commander 
De Roquemont in Gaspe Bay, where he had taken 
harbor, and fought him to his complete finish, 
burning his vessels laden with supplies for the 
forces at Quebec and capturing an enormous 
booty. The Dieppois Englishman tarried awhile 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 119 

in Gaspe Basin, and Faucher says that while there 
he burned a cache of grain belonging to the mis- 
sioners, though he had promised in the capitula- 
tion not to disturb the religious. It is evident 
that the Recollets are meant, for several Recollet 
fathers were among the captives, and it is an in- 
teresting reference to their early presence in the 
Basin. 

After the recovery of Canada from the English 
in 1632, Richelieu offered the Canadian missions 
to the Capuchins, but, declined by them, these 
were tendered to the Jesuits, Rud it was in that 
year on Trinity Sunday that Father LeJeune ar- 
rived in ''Gaspay," and he speaks of the content- 
ment with which he entered the new country after 
his long voyage. Here he found fishing vessels 
from Honfleur and Biscay and celebrated mass 
in their cabins. Father LeJeune went on to Ta- 
doussac, but he seems to have been stationed on 
the Gaspe coast, for in 1634 he says the winter 
was so cold that the Indians killed and ate a young 
boy whom the Basques had left to learn the lan- 
guage and again in 1635 speaks of the great abun- 



120 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

dance of cod in "our great river at Gaspe." It was 
in 1636 that Nicolas Denys began his labors for the 
development of the coast and its opening to settle- 
ment. His long activity on the coast for more than 
forty years seems to have been attended with an 
open want of sympathy from those whose coopera- 
tion he was entitled to expect and with severe losses 
from the adventures in the fishing. It is difficult 
to find evidence that any permanent settlement 
had been made by the French at any Gaspe point 
up to this date. Champlain's great map of his 
explorations in New France, dated 1632, indicated 
all French settlements of the country with a flag, 
but there is no flag on ah Gaspe. And of the events 
along the coast all during the supremacy of Denys 
we know little, though he himself wrote most in- 
terestingly of its natural history, its fishing, but 
only incidentally of the procession of happenings 
during his time. 

Nicolas Denys came to Canada with the Com- 
mander Razilly soon after the treaty of 1632 and 
established a settlement on the coast of Acadia. 
His residence was frequently changed, but even 



1 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 121 

in his later years, when he had become concerned 
with the Perce fishing, it does not appear that he 
settled in Gaspe. With Nicolas came his brother 
Denys de Vitre. Nicolas established a fishing sta- 
tion at Rossignol which he exploited in partnership 
with Razilly, and after the death of the latter he 
settled for a while at Miscou and some years later 
at St. Pierre, in Cape Breton. Ousted from Miscou 
by d'Aulnay, he settled near by at Nepisiguit, 
which was in his old age, to be his last home after 
the trying vicissitudes of his career. Again he 
went to St. Pierre where he found trouble await- 
ing him, for Le Borgne, a Rochelle merchant, had 
obtained from the French Parliament a concession 
of the same territory, from which he proceeded to 
drive Denys out. Sixty of Le Borgne 's men at- 
tacked Denys at his house on Cape Breton, car- 
ried off his workmen, and pillaged his vessel, which 
was loaded with merchandise. Denys himself they 
carried to Port Royal and put in irons. As soon 
as he was released he made for France, and re- 
turned in 1653 with a commission from the Com- 
pagnie du Nouvelle France as "Gouverneur en 



122 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

toute I'etendue de la grande baie Saint-Laurent 
et iles adjacentes a commencer depuis le cap de 
Canseau jusqu' au Cap des Rosiers," which was 
at once fortified with letters patent from the King. 
His commission proved a costly one to maintain 
and failing to cslttj out its conditions he was de- 
prived of lands at Perce by a grant from the In- 
tendant Talon to Denys's nephew Pierre, but as 
this grant was neglected by Pierre it seems to have 
been reassumed by Denys himself through his 
son and lieutenant, Richard Denys de Fronsac. 
Richard made grants to settlers at Perce and to 
the Recollets at Ristigouche. This was in 1685, 
three years before Denys's death. 

During all the years from 1632 the Jesuits had 
taken possession of the missions, but we catch 
only occasional glimpses of their activities. We 
know that Father Andre Richard was on the coast 
at Perce and near by in 1661, and that he followed 
in this field Father Martin Lyonne. Denys says 
that there were twelve hundred French fishing 
vessels along this coast and in Newfoundland in 
1650. It was about 1670 that the Government 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 123 

consented to the return of the Recollets. Richard 
Denys invited their presence at Perce, and Fathers 
Hilarion Guesnin and Exuper de Thune were sent 
here by their superior. Whether they came to- 
gether or in succession, they were the first to take 
up the work abandoned by the Recollets fifty 
years before. No progress had been made in the 
settlement of the country; it was still a wilder- 
ness, and the mission was to the four or five hun- 
dred Gaspesian Indians and nearly the same 
number of French fishermen. Thus it was when 
Chrestien LeClercq arrived at Perce, on the 27th of 
October, 1675, to take the mission. LeClercq 
repaired at once to the home of Pierre Denys, on 
Mai Bay, and being wholly at loss for means of 
communication with the Indians, set himself to 
acquire their language, spending his first winter 
with them in the camps at the headwaters of the 
rivers. It is to him that we owe the interesting 
Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspesie (1691), which has 
depicted with vividness and force the labors, dis- 
couragements and slender results of his mission 
and the nature, habits and customs of his Indians, 



124 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

an account which closes with the first period of 
his labors. 

The Perce mission house was founded in 1682, 
according to the contemporary account given by 
Father LeTac. LeClercq remained eleven years in 
spite of discouragements in the conversion of the 
natives. In his writings he speaks of the church 
at Perce, but it seems that this structure which 
was to pass under the vocable ''St. Peter's," was 
not erected till 1685. It was built by Brother 
Didace, was fifty feet long and contained rooms 
for the religious. We may beheve that the hospice 
at Perce and the church of St. Claire on Bona- 
venture were built at the same time and by the 
same hands. Father Joseph Denys was then mis- 
sionary at Perce. He was succeeded by Father 
Jumeau, who had been at the mission during Le- 
Clercq's settlement; and it was Jumeau who wit- 
nessed the pillage and burning of all the churches 
by the ''Boston corsairs" and "Dieppe renegades" 
which have recklessly been accredited to Sir Wil- 
liam Phips's naval forces in 1690. One can con- 
ceive of LeClercq's horror and despair at receiving 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 125 

from his former coworker the account of the ap- 
palUng doings at the httle mission. 

After the Provincial congresses at Albany and 
New York early in 1690, which concluded the 
purpose on the part of the Colonies ijD take offen- 
sive measures against New France, Sir William 
Phips was, as early as June, on his expedition from 
Boston against Quebec. He captured Port Royal, 
as all the world knows, and proceeded with his 
thirty-four vessels up through the Gulf and on to 
Quebec. Here he found himself confronted by 
an impregnable fortress, and his imperious demand 
for surrender was greeted with derision. Without 
a gun fired he turned about and sailed for home, 
and it was coincident with his disordered retreat 
that the ''corsairs" found an opportunity to dis- 
charge themselves of their pent-up zeal at the Uttle 
mission of Perce. It was a shameless, brutal out- 
burst of ruffianism which we may believe was 
perpetrated by stragglers from the fleet without 
the commander's orders or knowledge or by pri- 
vateers, perhaps commissioned, as Professor Gan- 
ong thinks, by the colony of New York. Father 



126 THE HEART OF GASP£; 

Jumeau, escaping from the devastation and wreck 
to the Isle D'Yeu in Biscay, wrote to his coworker 
as follows: 

My Reverend Father: 

I pass in silence the distressing details of the 
shipwreck that we suffered last year, during a ter- 
rible night, the twenty-third of November, off 
Cap Des Hosiers, fifteen leagues from the Isle 
Percee; and the troubles we have endured this 
year, from having been seized by a frigate of Fles- 
singue, fifty leagues from Rochelle; for I v\dsh to 
confide to you the one sorrow which fills my whole 
heart at present, and which, I am certain, will 
afflict you no less than it does me, since I have been 
a witness of the pains you have taken in establish- 
ing our mission in the Isle Percee, and of the zeal 
with which you have labored for the glory of God 
and the salvation of souls. It seems as though it 
pleased Our Lord to preserve my hfe in the ship- 
wreck only that I might be a witness also of the 
total ruin and utter desolation of this place, in 
order to relate it to you, who will make known to 
all the world to what excess of impiety and hatred 
heresy can reach when once it finds itself able by 
the help of its adherents to undertake and carry 
out its plans. Briefly to tell you : in the early part 
of last August two English frigates appeared, 
flying the French flag, in the roadstead of the Isle 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 127 

of Bonaventure, and by this stratagem they easily 
seized five fishing vessels whose captains and crews 
were at the time wholly occupied with fishing, 
and were all forced to fly to Quebec, not being in a 
condition to defend themselves nor contend with 
so many nations leagued against them. Then 
these sworn enemies of the State and of Religion, 
having attempted to land, and succeeding ac- 
cording to their desires, sojourned the/e eight 
whole days, and committed an hundred impious 
acts, with all the disorders imaginable. Among 
other things, they pillaged, ravaged and burned 
the houses of the inhabitants, who number at 
least eight or ten families, and who, for the most 
part, had already fled into the woods with pre- 
cipitation, to avoid the presence and the cruelty 
of those pitiless Heretics, who made horrible car- 
nage, fire and blood everywhere. I shiver with 
horror at the simple remembrance of the impieties 
and sacrileges that these wretches committed in 
our church, which they used as a guardhouse and 
a place of debauch; animated by the same spirit 
as the Iconoclasts, they broke and strewed under 
foot our images, against which they fulminated 
a thousand imprecations, with invectives and in- 
sults as though they had been living creatures. 
The pictures of the Holy Virgin and of Saint Peter 
were not exempt from their fury and violence; for 
both were riddled with more than a hundred and 
fifty shots which these wretched men discharged, 



128 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

and with each shot they pronounced with mockery 
and derision these words of the htanies: 

Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis; 
Sancte Petre, ora pro nobis. 

Not a cross escaped their fury, with the excep- 
tion of the one that I formerly planted on the 
Table-a-Rolland, which by reason of being on a 
mountain of too difficult access, stands at present 
all alone, the sacred monument of our Chris- 
tianity. The sacrileges of Balthazar, who in olden 
times in the midst of a feast profaned the sacred 
vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem, making his 
courtesans and concubines drink from them, were 
the same that these Heretics committed, who 
amidst their horrible debauches day and night, 
drank from our chalices bumpers to the health of 
the Prince of Orange, whom they blessed, hurling 
on the contrary a thousand imprecations against 
their legitimate King. The conmaander, in order 
to be as distinguished by his impiety as he was 
by his position, dressed himself in the handsomest 
of our chasubles, and by an ostentation as vain 
as it was ridiculous, promenaded on the beach, 
with the silver monstrance fastened on his cap, 
and obliged his companions, using a thousand 
dissolute words, to pay him the same honors and 
reverences that the Catholics render in the most 
solemn processions to the Most Holy Sacrament 
of the Altar. At last they closed all these impieties 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 129 

with a ceremony as extraordinary in form as it 
was extravagant and abominable in all its circum- 
stances. They took the crowns of the Holy Sacra- 
ment and of the Holy Virgin, and placed them on 
the head of a sheep; they tied the animal's feet, 
and having laid it on the consecrated Stone of 
the High Altar, they killed it, sacrificed it in de- 
rision of the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, as a 
thanksgiving to God, (so they said) for the first 
victories they had gained, over the Papists of New 
France. This being finished they set fire to the 
four corners of the church, which was quickly 
reduced to ashes. So also did they treat that of 
our Mission in the Isle of Bonaventm-e, doomed 
to a like destiny, after they had broken the images 
and cut all the ornaments with great sabre-thrusts. 
You can well judge by the sorrow you feel at the 
simple recital that I make you of these disasters 
how deeply I was moved, when, on the very spot 
where had been the High Altar of our church, I 
found still there the carcass of the sheep which 
had served as the victim of that abominable sacri- 
fice of those impious men. Outraged and pene- 
trated with grief thus to see all the crosses of this 
Mission hacked into pieces or overthrown, I at 
once formed the resolution to re-establish the 
principal ones; this I succeeded in doing with the 
kind help of the inhabitants, who applied them- 
selves to this holy work with a piety and devotion 
which exceeded even the fury and rage that the 



130 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

Heretics had displayed in destroying them. But 
alas! my dear Father, I have great cause to be- 
lieve, and I fear indeed, that they will suffer again 
the fatal results of a second attack from these 
sworn enemies of our holy Religion, because two 
days after the erection of these Crosses, that is to 
say on the tenth of September, we were obUged 
to quickly cut our cables and spread sail at the 
sight of seven hostile ships, which gave chase to 
us in a strange manner, but from which we hap- 
pily at last escaped by favor of the night, during 
which we beheld with grief all the habitations of 
the Little River on fire. God knows in what per- 
plexity and inquietude we were then what to do, 
having no port sail which we needed to crowd sail, 
so as to get more quickly to a distance from the Isle 
Percee, and besides that, in want of bread, of fresh 
water, in a word of everythmg that is needed for so 
long and difficult a voyage as is that from Canada 
to France. But at last Our Lord in his mercy de- 
hvered us out of all these dangers, and particularly 
from the privateer of Flessingue, who, having 
seized our vessel, stripped us of everything, and 
after having detained us only four or five hours 
on board his ship, sent us back on our vessel after 
many menaces and much ill-treatment; and two 
days later, being again pursued by another vessel, 
we discovered joyfully the Isle Dieu [D'Yeu], 
where we have just cast anchor in the roadstead, 
and from which place I write you this letter, 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 131 

hoping to describe to you more fully the misfor- 
tunes of our Mission of the Isle Percee. Mean- 
while remember me in your Holy Sacrifices, and 
believe me for all eternity yours. 

Father Hugolin, of the Franciscans, has quite 
lately written at length concerning the Recollet 
mission at Perce and the reader who feels an 
interest in the efforts made during the last quarter 
of the 1600's toward settlement and evangeliza- 
tion may profitably refer to his U Etablissement des 
Recollets a VIsle Percee— 1673-1690 (1912). With 
the burning of the churches the mission was dis- 
continued. Perce was too openly exposed to 
attack, now that trouble with the English was 
becoming more acute. The Perc6 church was, 
according to early documents, located "near the 
beach," but as that is a rather vague statement, 
tradition and common opinion of to-day are dis- 
posed to place it on the slope of Mt. Joli toward 
the North beach, probably on the lower cliff so 
that the structure and its cross could be well 
seen by the fishermen in the north offing. 

There Hes an ancient burying ground on the 



132 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

slope of Mt. Joli. The story goes that at a later 
day after the Irish had begun to settle near Perce, 
they objected to burial with the French in the 
new cemetery and they were inhumed in the 
"cimitiere ancienne." At all events I have been 
witness of the opening of an ancient grave on the 
slope of Mt. Joli, slabbed with stone a few feet 
below the surface, from out of which was taken a 
cranium with a bullet hole or spike wound in it — 
a victim of some sea fight or homelier encounter 
which has passed into oblivion. There is no record 
to show when a mission was reestablished at Perce, 
but the Recollets never came back after the dis- 
astrous affair of 1690. 

It was in 1711 that Hovenden Walker and 
Jack Hill led their armada from Boston out against 
Quebec, and it was in Gaspe Bay they came to 
anchor while feeling their way pilotless through 
the Gulf. It was on the Egg Island that the storms 
of these rough waters tossed them with fearful 
loss of life, making an end of all their foohsh ambi- 
tions. One at least of their fleet seems to have 
been wrecked on Cape d'Espoir. 



I 



THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 133 

Time runs rapidly on this coast without much 
other record than the growth of the fisheries. 
The crisis between the French and English claims 
was approaching, and foreseeing it, Beauharnois, 
the Governor General, proposed to the Ministry 
in 1745 to effect an establishment at Gaspe while 
a few years later (1756) Montcalm complained 
that the English had already entrenched them- 
selves there and urged that a French fleet be sent 
to drive them out. 

Of General Wolfe's doings in Gasp^ I have told 

in another chapter, and after the subversion of 

the French rule, settlement went on more rapidly. 

Nicholas Cox,* Lieutenant-Governor of Gasp^, 

* Governor Cox had been an officer under Wolfe at Louis- 
bourg and the Plains of Abraham. He was Lieut .-Governor 
of Gasp6 in 1774 and Superintendent of the Labrador Fish- 
eries and in these capacities built up a little court at New 
Carlisle, Bonaventure County, but lived intermittently at 
Perc6. In this office he was succeeded by Francis LeMoine 
who also resided at Perce, the shiretown of Gaspe County. 
At a later date the "Lieutenant-Governorship of Gasp6," 
says Sir James LeMoine, "was one of the many sinecures 
which roused the patriotic ire of the PapLneau party. In 1821 
the House tried to abolish the sinecure on the groimds that 
the incumbent was often an absentee from the province. 
The salary had been reduced from £1,000 to £300. In 1825, 
it refused to pass the item in the Civil List." 



134 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

reported in 1777 that there were one hundred and 
seventy-four persons living in Gasp6. Upon the 
accomphshment of the American Revolution 
loyalist families from the States sought new homes 
in this coimtry. In 1783 General Haldimand de- 
tailed Capt. Justus Sherwood to explore the Bay 
Chaleur and the region northward and select the 
most suitable locations for settlement and as a 
result of the exploration two hundred and fifty 
to three hundred loyalist famiUes, Irish, English 
and Scotch, located, part at Douglastown, on 
Gasp^ Bay, and the rest at New Carhsle and New 
Richmond, in Bonaventure County. The rest of 
the story of loyalist settlement in the country is 
rather long and disjointed. 



1 

i 



FRENCH SEIGNIORIES AND ENGLISH PATENTS 

Seigniories on the St. Lawrence river — Ste Anne-des-Monts — 
Madeleine — Grand Etang — Grand Vallee — Mont Louis — 
Griffon Cove — Cap-Chat — Perce — Grand River — Grand Pa- 
bos — English patents at Gaspe Basin. 

The earliest concessions of land in fief along the 
Gasp6 coast were located on the St. Lawrence 
river and were intended by the grantors to en- 
courage the business of the whale and cod fishery. 
In these monopolistic grants the name of Denis 
Riverin plays a large part and we find that the 
king himself was interested in the success of 
Riverin's undertakings though he afterward lost 
confidence in them and complained that, though 
often helped, Riverin's fisheries were of slight 
account (see a note in Parkman's Old Regime, 
2:93). Ste Anne-des-Monts was granted to Riverin 
(1688), who had besought the support of the 
Governor and Intendant for his enterprise. The 
next year (1689) he obtained the concession of 
Cap'de-la-Magdalaine. The same Riverin with 

135 



136 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

his partner Francois Hazeur, secured the grant of 
Grand Etang in 1697 and Hazeur had become 
a proprietor of Grande Vallee in 1691. In 1725, 
Michel Sarrazin, the distinguished naturalist and 
physician, whose name is registered in American 
botany by its association with Sarracenia, the 
pitcher plant, acquired both of these seigniories.* 
In 1810 they were sold by the sheriff to John Black- 
wood and in 1837, John Greenshields inherited a 
part of the estate. 

The first concessionaire of Mont-Louis was 
Nicolas Bourlet, from whom it passed in 1725 to 
Louis Gosselin and in 1754 to Joseph Cadet. It 

* "His position in the colony," says Parkman in speaking 
of Sarrazin, "was singular and characteristic. He got little 
or no pay from his patients ; and though at one time the only 
genuine physician in Canada, he was dependent on the king 
for support. In 1699 we find him thanking his Majesty for 
300 francs a year and asking at the same time for more as he 
has nothing else to live on. Two years later the Governor 
writes that as he serves almost everybody without fees, he 
ought to have another 300 francs. The additional 300 francs 
were given, but finding it insufficient he wanted to leave the 
colony. 'He is too useful,' writes the Governor again, 'we 
can not let him go.' His j^early pittance of 600 francs, French 
money, was at one time reinforced by his salary as member of 
the Superior Council. He died at Quebec in 1734." 



SEIGNIORIES AND ENGLISH PATENTS 137 

was acquired by Jacques Curchard in 1789 and 
purchased at sheriff's sale by Matthew Bell in 
1799. 

Griffon Cove was conceded in 1688 but was di- 
vided between Louis d'Ailleboust, governor of 
New France, Jean, Charles and Louis de Lauzon, 
Jacques le Neuf de-la-Poterie, Charles d'Ailleboust 
des Musseaux, Jean Paul Godefroy and Jean 
Bourdon. 

Cap-Chat seems to have been the first of all 
these seigniorial grants. It was given in 1662 to 
Michel le Neuf de-la- Valliere. 

Perce, from 1654 acknowledged Nicolas Denys 
as overlord, so far as there was anyone in the coun- 
try except the Micmacs to make this obeisance to 
a seigneur who never went to Gaspe. Nicolas, we 
have seen, did not keep the terms of his patent 
and so Talon took Perce away from him in 1672 
and gave it to Nicolas's nephew Pierre Denys, a 
leasehold of three leagues of sea front and a half- 
league landward. This grant was not confirmed 
until 1676 by Talon's successor, Duchesneau, and 
it provided that Charles Bazire and Charles 



138 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

Aubert-de-Chenaie should be associated with 
Denys as co-proprietors of the Seigniory of the Isle 
Percee. "They had a two-fold establishment; one 
at the Little River [to-day Tickle Inlet] at the en- 
trance of the Barachois ... two leagues from 
Perce toward Gaspe Bay; the other at Perce itself" 
(Hugolin). The pursuit of the fishery for which 
this grant was made, was not a success and in 
1677 the greater part of the grant was ceded by 
the owners to Jacques Le Ber. This was the 
stretch of coast on the Malbay front. Perce re- 
mained in the hands of Pierre Denys until 1685 
when it seems to have been abandoned by him 
and the proprietorship resumed by Nicolas Denys, 
who was represented on the coast by his son, 
Richard sieur de Fronsac. 

At the time Pierre Denys was desirous of es- 
tablishing a RecoUet Mission on his seigniory he 
represented to the society in France that there 
was at Perce a storehouse, 50 by 25 feet, large 
enough for packing the fish for a vessel of 300 tons 
and to lodge its equipment; a little house near by 
for the conmiander; a chapel and lodgings for two 



SEIGNIORIES AND ENGLISH PATENTS 139 

Recollets, framed up and ready for cultivation, 
the other half needing only a Uttle work to fit it 
for the plow. Besides this, at the "little river" 
(Barachois) were winter quarters and a poultry 
yard; lodgings large enough for 15 people; store- 
house for provisions and fittings for barque and 
chaloupe; barn and stable for 20 horned cattle 
and 30 acres of cleared land; a court of two acres 
and a garden of one acre, both enclosed with a 
stone wall. There were four or five families re- 
corded as settled at Perce during this time of 
Father LeClercq's mission, and their names, 
Boissel, Lamothe, Lespine, Le Gascon, may be 
looked on, with Denys, as the earUest known on 
the Perce coast.* 

Further out on the coast were the seigniories of 
Grand River and Grand Pabos. The former was 
granted to Pierre Cochu in 1697. In 1793 Duncan 
Anderson had become proprietor and sold it to 
Charles Robin from whom it descended to his 

* These statements regarding the Perce seigniory and 
settlement are largely taken from Hugolin's Etahlissement 
des Recollets a VIsle Percee, and Professor Ganong's life of 
Nicolas Denys (Champlain Society). 



140 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

nephews, James, Philippe and John. It is now 
owned by Mr. Cabot of Boston who holds it as a 
salmon preserve. 

Grand Pabos was conceded originally to Ren6 
Hubert in 1696 and passed thence into the hands 
of Messrs. Lefebvre and Belief euille. In 1765, 
it was bought by General Haldimand who sold 
in 1796 to Felix O'Hara and afterward to his heirs. 
Later it was taken over by the ill-omened ''Com- 
pagnie de Gaspe" which nearly ruined the land 
by stripping off its forests, until the government 
stepped in in 1863, took possession and opened it 
to settlement. 

In the early days of the English rule some land 
grants were made but they were all of small extent. 
In 1766 Joseph Deane, captain and commander 
of H. M. S. Mermaid, received a patent of 517 
acres on the York side of the Sou 'west Arm at 
Gasp^ Basin, and in 1767 Edward Manwaring, 
customs officer at the port of Gaspe, acquired a 
grant on the north side of Gaspe Bay. The same 
year Felix O'Hara and John McCord obtained 
patent to lands on the north side of the Sou'west 



SEIGNIORIES AND ENGLISH PATENTS 141 

arm where the village of Gaspe now stands. In 
1787, Lieutenant-Governor Cox, then living at 
Perce, obtained the concession of Bonaventure 
Island, which subsequently passed into the pos- 
session of Captain Peter John Duval, privateer.* 

* Many of these statements regarding the seigniories and 
other concessions I have freely taken from Mr. Eugene Rouil- 
lard's valuable descriptive account of the lower St. Lawrence 
counties, entitled La Colonization dans les conites de Temis- 
couata, Rimouski, Matane, Bonaventure, Gaspe, and pubhshed 
by the Quebec Commissioner of Colonization and Mines. 
I have also consulted, through the favor of Mr, Chester 
Guild, "Extrait des Titres des Concessions des Terres octroy ces 
en fief dans la Province du Bas-Canada." There is also before 
me, by the courtesy of Mr. F. J. Richmond, a copy of the 
original patent of Gaspe Basin to Felix O'Hara and John 
McCord, wherein it is set forth that "whereas the premises 
granted are barren and unfit for the production of Hemp or 
Flax [the royal requisition for sails and cordage] they ought 
rather to be employed in the feeding of neat cattle or to be 
improved by the opening and working stone quarries or 
mines of some other useful mineral, than to be planted, sown 
or cultivated;" the grantees are to put seventy-eight neat 
cattle on the premises and keep them there until seventy 
acres were cleared, or some alternatives in regard to opening 
quarries and feeding cattle at the rate of 3 to every fifty acres; 
leaving the present day reader to wonder how it was all to be 
done when the whole country side was in deep timber. 



GENERAL WOLFE IN GASPfi 

His arrival in 1758 — The French settlement at Peninsula — 
Smyth's picture — House of the Intendant occupied by 
Wolfe — Destruction of Miramichi and Mont Louis — 
Relics of French occupation on Peninsula Point — Later oc- 
cupation. 

When Louisbourg surrendered in July, 1758, it 
was only after stubborn resistance and it had 
become too late in the season to carry out the 
plans for the intended advance of the fleet upon 
Quebec. General Amherst had received a hurry 
call to New York where Montcalm had beaten off 
the colonials and regulars at Ticonderoga. With 
him he took 6,000 troops, so that the army at 
Louisbourg was considerably weakened, but to 
keep the ships employed and prevent their too 
early return to England, he despatched orders to 
the remaining troops, and Admiral Boscawen to 
the squadron, to spend the rest of the season in 
cruising along the French coast as far as Gasp^, 
in order to despoil the fishing villages. Colonel 

142 



GENERAL WOLFE IN GASPE 143 

Wolfe, as he was at Louisbourg, Brigadier-General 
Wolfe as designated in these orders, was to com- 
mand the troops with Sir Charles Hardy as Admiral 
of the fleet. 

It was not a dignified undertaking. But it had 
taken England so long to set her fleet free from 
European waters to pursue the drama in America 
that some such supplementary byplay was neces- 
sary to keep the ships from getting back to the 
other side while the critical moment in the great 
maritime war was impending. The plan would 
serve in a measure too, to forestall any purpose of 
the French to strengthen the portals of the St. 
Lawrence river. "Sir Charles Hardy and I," 
Wolfe wrote to his father, ''are preparing to rob 
the fishermen of their nets and burn their huts. 
When that great exploit is at an end I return to 
Louisbourg and thence to England." 

On this mission seven ships with three regi- 
ments, the 15th, 28th and 58th, set sail August 28th 
and arrived off Gaspe on September 4th. Bou- 
gainville says the soldiers numbered 1,500 men 
and that the equipment included 12 houses "com- 



144 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

pletely fashioned"; which would seem to indicate 
the mtention of the general to winter a part of his 
army in Gaspe, his objective point, whatever his 
own purpose of return may have been. We have 
no record of any stops being made on the way, or 
of any settlements disturbed. 

On arriving in Gaspe Bay the gun ships of the 
squadron anchored off Sandy Beach at the his- 
toric spot where in all probability Cartier made 
his landing in 1534 and where Edward VII, as 
Prince of Wales, was run aground in 1861, his first 
contact with American soil. The transports of 
the fleet went further up the bay within the cove 
of the Penouil or Peninsula. The French settle- 
ment in the Bay was then, so far as we can ascer- 
tain, almost wholly on the broad triangular sand- 
pits of Peninsula point. Quite the only intimation 
we can find in regard to it is from Capt. Hervey 
Smyth's picture drawn while he was here as aide- 
de-camp to Wolfe, engraved and printed in 1760. 
Of all the seven pubhshed pictures made by Smyth 
of views in Canada, this one of Gaspe Bay is much 
the worst in drawing, for the artist has taken enor- 



GENERAL WOLFE IN GASPE 145 

mous liberties with nature in bringing into his 
picture both sides of the bay, compressing the 
head of the bay thus from a width of three or four 
miles to a space so narrow one might almost jump 
across. The point of view is close outside the 
Peninsula, and this brings the sand bar into the 
foreground with strong effect and displays, with 
very great precision as it proves, the location of 
the buildings of the settlement. The principal 
one of these is a two-storied, steep-gabled structure 
of considerable dignity for such a settlement, the 
main part having a large double door entrance, 
while the wing has a single door and a little shed 
lean-to. Each wing has a chimney, and altogether 
the building is in strong contrast to the four cabins 
or settlers' houses which lie in a row behind it at 
the edge of the spruce woods. Over on the other 
side of the bay, on the shore of what is to-day called 
Lobster Cove, stands a single cabin, enough to 
indicate that settlement had already extended to 
both shores. But the main house was evidently 
the residence of the intendant, Reval, who, Bou- 
gainville says, had died three days before Wolfe's 



146 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

arrival. It was in this house that the General 
took up his habitation while he remained at Gasp^. 
Bougainville speaks of the building as a storehouse 
from which the English obtained a large quantity 
of dried cod. It was all of these, beyond doubt; 
an official residence and seat of the French customs, 
a storehouse and the summer cottage of General 
Wolfe during his vacation of 1758. The date of 
its destruction is not known. It is probable that 
the tender-hearted Wolfe left it standing after it 
had sheltered him. Its relics evince a confusion 
of French and English belongings and its debris 
which have been, in a way, casually known, to 
some of the residents during all the years past, are 
spoken of variantly as from the "French houses," 
the ''old French custom house" or "General 
Wolfe's house." 

Upon arrival General Wolfe demanded the 
surrender of the place but, as just said, found the 
intendant already dead and the settlers gone up 
the rivers. Only two or three responded to the 
order. The "surrender" of Gaspe to the English 
dates from September 5th, 1758. One wonders, 



GENERAL WOLFE IN GASPfi 147 

in searching for contemporary accounts of the 
doings of the army and fleet in the bay, how the 
men deported themselves during their month's 
stay here. The twelve houses "completely fash- 
ioned" probably for a winter's stay, were not taken 
ashore. There were above a thousand soldiers 
and the crews of seven ships to be kept busy at 
something. Our wonder may be qualified as we 
think of the waters of the bay, its rivers and brooks 
teeming with trout, salmon and tuna, cod, mack- 
erel and herring; the wooded hills with moose, 
caribou, elk and bear and much lesser game. The 
general who esteemed hghtly the dignity of his 
mission had opportunity to solace his pride and 
enjoy the fruits of his ''conquest." Brigadier 
General Murray — afterward to be whipped on 
the Plains of Abraham by General Levis and even 
so to become Canada's first English governor — 
was in the meantime despatched to the mouth of 
the Miramichi river with orders to destroy the 
French settlement there and, according to his own 
report, he did this effectively, though Bougainville, 
writing with contemporary knowledge, says he 



148 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

didn't — that the settlers blocked his passage to 
the river and that the English left without doing 
any damage. Miramichi and its ''battle" are the 
subject of one of Smyth's sketches and this shows 
the church and religious estabhshment standing 
on the south bank of the river; the present site, 
Dr. Ganong says, of the village of Burnt Church, 
which he believes embodies in its name the assault 
made by Murray's soldiers. A part of the fleet 
was also sent by Wolfe to destroy the religious 
establishment at Mont-Louis on the south shore 
of the St. Lawrence. 

In the early days of October General Wolfe 
withdrew his forces and returned to Louisbourg. 
He and his men had had "a much needed rest" 
in Gaspe and, in modern parlance, that means, 
"the time of their lives." 

It is a matter of real interest that the site of the 
"Custom House" and of at least two or three of 
the smaller houses behind it have been satisfac- 
torily located. This has been done by Mr. Rich- 
mond of Gaspe and myself with the help of Smyth's 
picture drawn in 1758 which gives with entire 



GENERAL WOLFE IN GASPfi 149 

accuracy the positions of the buildings relative 
to the woods and the boundaries of the sand bar. 
The Custom House which stood in front of the 
others, is to-day marked by a clump of dwarf spruce 
standing almost alone in the sands and growing 
out of the very chimney place of the building. 
Another site is indicated by a brick-made chimney 
and other debris at the place where now stands a 
ferry house, just on the edge of the woods at the 
south, and here probably stood the first of the 
row of four houses indicated by Smyth. Still 
further along the row northward and back close 
to the edge of the spruce woods lies another pile 
of debris near about where the third or the last 
of the houses in the row stands in the picture. 
The interest that attaches to these rubbish piles 
lies in such remains as they contain of the French 
occupancy and their indications of the modes of 
living in these early settlements — so with some 
care and persistence Mr. Richmond and I have 
searched and sifted the sands for the relics of these 
old days. 

It will be understood that these reliquiae are 



150 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

buried in sand which has frozen and thawed for 
half each year during perhaps 150 years. Any- 
thing there more fragile than metal has naturally 
been reduced to fragments and its evidence has 
had to be pieced together. In among the older 
reliques too are perfectly clear evidences of a later 
and English occupation. In the whaling days in 
the Gulf, no longer ago than 40 years, the Penin- 
sula sand bar was much in use for trying out blub- 
ber and there are still plenty of stone hearths over 
the sand nearer the point which indicate where 
such operations were carried on. I am not sure 
that the whalers ever made use of the old French 
sites but if they did not some of the early English 
settlers did, judging from the relics found in the 
debris. 

When one speculates as to whether the English 
troops destroyed these French houses or left them 
standing to a later date, there are some fair con- 
siderations of weight. Wolfe was kind-hearted, 
never ruthless, always a generous foe. It is hardly 
likely he would have given orders to destroy the 
buildings unless he had received very positi\e 



GENERAL WOLFE IN GASPfi 151 

orders to have it done. Yet there are evidences 
in the remains even yet of a hurried departure 
by their inmates — the coins scattered through 
the sand, the vast number of clay pipes — one does 
not leave such things behind except in a great 
hurry. But in a new country when most of the 
business must have been by barter, even the coin 
of the realm lost some of its charm. 

There is no trace of fire among the relics, not 
the slightest evidence that the buildings were 
burned, rather that even though they may have 
been left in a hurry by the French on the approach 
of the British ships, they fell away by natural 
decay, left on the soil the spikes and nails that 
kept the timbers together and with them the 
ordinary debris and waste of hving. 

The discriminating knowledge of the man who 
knows, tells what, among these relics, are early 
and what are late and in ascertaining these dis- 
tinctions where my own knowledge failed I have 
had the judgment of many experts in many lines 
of esoteric knowledge. Here is a record of some 
of these culture articles: 



152 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

There are coins of silver, billon and copper — a 
statement not quite true, as the only two silver 
coins that have come to my notice are one from 
Pointe Naveau up the Dartmouth river a few miles, 
and the other from the Perce beaches. Of these, 
however, it is worth recording, the first is a finely 
preserved ecu or egu hlanc, equal to 3 livres or 60 
sous. The obverse carries the bust of the king and 
the legend: LUDXVDGFRETNAVREX; 
and the reverse the shield of three lilies couronnees 
with the inscription: SIT NOMEN- DOMINI • 
BENEDICTUM1721. The com from Perce is 
a piece of four sous (quatre-sols) ; on the face: 
LUDOVICUS • XIIII • DGRA • around a draped 
bust; and reverse: FRANETNA (var) RAE- 
REX" 1675 with a cross of fleurs-de-lis in the 
center under a crown. 

An interesting piece in billon from the custom 
house site is a sou of Navarre-et-Bearn bearing 
the title ''LUD' XIIII" and the date 1693. The 
sou of this date was valued at 12 deniers. 

Of the copper coins there are three Liards, in 
all of which the obverse with its bust and legend 



GENERAL WOLFE IN GASPE 153 

are badly corroded. But the reverse shows the 
denomination in uncials: LIARD DE FRANCE, 
in three lines. One of these was found in the sand 
near the Veit wharf at Gaspe Basin and bears the 
mint mark L, indicating the Saint-Lo mint. One 
of the others carries the uncial I, the mark of the 
Limoges mint. These coins are of about the date 
of 1654-58. 

Another copper coin is the Double Toiunois 
of 2 deniers. Three of these have been found at 
Peninsula, all in pretty bad shape, and not in 
all respects ahke. The Double was replaced in 
1649 by the Liard of 3 deniers, but its first issue 
goes as far back as 1575, so that the date of these 
pieces may lie anywhere between Henri IV and 
Louis XIV. Several other coppers have been 
obtained but in too bad a condition for the experts 
to identify. 

Here then is evidence of buried treasure in 
Gaspe and there is doubtless more to come. It 
is one thing to talk about buried money and plate 
and quite another thing to find it. There are 
plenty of stories on this coast of great fortunes 



154 THE HEART OF GASP£ 

secreted under flat rocks in iron chests. One of 
these chests is buried at Little Gasp6. I am as- 
sured of that by a sailor who knows it is there and 
has seen the rock it is buried under. Capt. Kidd's 
plate (poor old Kidd who was a mere amateur 
pirate and never captured enough in his brief 
career to make one doubloon for each secret burial 
place accredited to him) is hunted for in Lenfesty's 
brook at Perce. This is Eddd's "farthest north," 
I believe, but a seeker after truth has actually 
been detected in digging here by the Hght of the 
moon with a shovel fitted with copper rivets "to 
attract the gold." So Gasp6 is not unlike other 
coasts in its share of these tales. 

Some of the other relics are of interest : 
Tobacco seals. These objects are lead seals with 
the holes through them for connecting wires. I 
have obtained two of these impressed from tri- 
angular dies in a circular mold. Tobacco was a 
government monopoly in France then as it is 
to-day and these are rather interesting things for 
one reason at least: that I have found no one yet 
who is specially or expertly interested in them. 



GENERAL WOLFE IN GASPfi 155 

On each within a pearled border is a quatrefoil 
at each angle. On one is the legend: BUR (eau) * 
DEDINANT: L (ouis)XV; at the center of the 
die and above the king's name, a crown; on the 
other side of this is a fleur-de-lis with the legend 
PREFET • DU • TABAC. The second seal bears 
on one side the legend: CARLIERDES BOY • 
TABAC with a lily at the center; and on the other: 
BUREAU • CEN (trale) D • DIN AN (t) with a ro~ 
sette at the center. The first is the royal hcense, 
the second evidently issued from the same govern- 
ment bureau at Dinant but carries the name of the 
manufacturer. 

The pipes or the remains of them are material 
for an interesting study, though they are badly 
broken. Many of them are of the long stemmed 
churchwarden type and a few have shown seals or 
makers' marks indicating that they were of Dutch 
or French manufacture, — pipes de Hollande, as 
they were generally known to the trade of the 
time. 

There are quantities of fragments of decorated 
dishes which are certainly from the Staffordshire 



156 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

potteries of England and cannot date back beyond 
the early part of the 18th century. These may 
indicate a later occupation of the site but not of 
necessity an English occupation, for the French 
here did business with the English, otherwise 
there would have been no need for a Custom 
House. 

There are Micmac flint arrow tips, stone ax 
and pipe stem; which intimate that the Indians 
were frequently about the settlement at a pe- 
riod before they had abandoned their primitive 
weapons.* 

Flint nodules brought from the chalk beds of 

France or England, or both, lie in large quantity 

at various places over the point. These were for 

gun flints and were evidently brought over in 

ballast from the old country. They are often 

chipped, with plenty of flint flakes scattered about. 

* The only dweller on the sand bar of Peninsula to-day is 
John Lambert, now an old man, who has been here for well- 
nigh half a century. Lambert is a half-breed Micmac, almost 
the last of his race in this part of Gasp6. Long the ferryman 
from Peninsula to the Basin, he is in his old age, a man of 
some substance with a pretty home ensconced among the 
spruce woods. 



GENERAL WOLFE IN GASPfi 157 

Some years ago in a little ravine on the road back 
of the point and running toward Roseville Mr. 
Richmond found the iron parts, lock and barrel, 
of three flint lock guns tucked away in a nook 
in the rocks. These locks have been pronounced 
by an expert in firearms to be of French manu- 
facture and of about the date of the Conquest. 

Wrought iron spikes of great and small size lie 
in some profusion in the sand. Oxidation has 
penetrated clear through them and often the oxide 
has aggregated balls of compact cemented sand 
about them — good illustrations of the mode and 
rate of producing such balls which are conomon 
structures in rock formations. 

Shoe or knee buckles, solid or embossed metal 
buttons, cod hooks of the ancient style without 
the ''Kirby" bend, are some of the other things 
the sand has given up. Even the bricks which 
compose the chimneys in some of the sites are of 
interest, being evidently of French make and 
peculiar to us by their long, fiat, thin shape. In 
all there is enough to arouse the curiosity, though 
hardly the cupidity, of anyone concerned with the 



158 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

mode of living here among the early settlers on the 
coast. And should anyone be interested in these 
remains of the days in Gaspe, he may find these 
collections in the Chateau de Ramezay, the historic 
home of the Canadian Antiquarian Society. 



THE WRECK OF THE JACQUES-CARTIER 

There is not in all Gasp6 another such view as 
one gets from the summit of the King's road which 
crosses the Forillon at the Grande Greve. It is 
not easy to set down in ink and English a descrip- 
tion that will carry a true impression of its pe- 
culiar grandeur to one who has not seen it; but 
this is the way of it: you climb this road leading 
up from Gasp4 Bay to the top of the hill, a matter 
of a mile, when suddenly it drops out of sight and 
you find that one more step straight ahead will 
precipitate you over a chff six hundred feet or 
more sheer to the waters of the St. Lawrence river. 
The road has turned a little to one side and bent 
downward at almost a right angle — I cannot take 
more than a few degrees off that statement; it is 
no more abrupt than the road itself which few 
travelers venture to ride down in their carts and 
still fewer to come up. On one side the King's 

highway lies the ever lessening cliff slowly drop- 
159 



160 THE HEART OF GASPE 

ping to the water, while landward rises the bare 
bluff of Mt. St. Alban towering gray and straight 
to a height of near 2,000 feet. Losing itself to view 
on its downward flight the way comes out at last 
on the flat sea terrace of Cap-des-Rosiers Cove 
and at length to the majestic light on the Cape 
itself. We need to follow it no further though 
it runs on up the river coast through the French 
fishing villages with inviting names and charm- 
ing locations; L'Anse-Louise, L'Anse-au-gris-fond, 
L'Anse-Fugere, L'Anse-Valleau and Riviere-aux- 
Renards, places that are seldom reached except 
by the fish buyers and drummers; thence, on the 
only road on this coast of somber mountains, till 
it joins its inland neighbors far up the river near 
Matane. 

At the point where the road falls off and dis- 
appears, at St. Alban, or the ''Big Hill" as it is 
known to the coast, there is a broad grassy plot 
at the right where the spruce has been cut away 
and here one can lie among the scattered new 
growth and command the whole arch of Rosiers 
Cove far down below and the black cape that 



WRECK OF THE JACQUES-CARTIER 161 

guards its farther end. Yet one does not catch 
the meaning of this Cape and its adjoining cHffs 
unless he goes to it and looks back from its light- 
house windows on the tremendous fortification 
from which he has descended, and sees the sheer 
wall of rock running from St. Alban, whose foot 
is protected from the waters by the fallen talus, 
out to the end of the peninsula at Cape Gaspe — 
cliffs at whose base a boat can scarcely find a 
landing on the thin wavering line of beach. 

Only with this barricade under his eye can one 
realize the fearful menace this giant comb of rocks 
has been from the earliest days of navigation in 
the upper Gulf and through the river. Against 
these the northeast winds strike full and fair and 
rush a frantic sea from off the Labrador and Anti- 
costi. All this was a place of fearful wreckage 
before the lights on Shiphead and Cap-des-Rosiers 
were put up.* For a century before the conquest 
there was a large traffic between the old France 



* The Rosiers light is oldest on the coast below Point des 
Monts, and dates from 1858. The old Shiphead light was 
built in 1873, but the present one is of much later date. 



162 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

and the new. The growing ports of Quebec and 
Montreal required the best of French transports 
and often of French frigates for their supply and 
their protection. The fisheries in the Gulf were 
very active and profitable, and as many as two 
hundred French fishing sail were to be seen at one 
time in those days in the offing of Perce. But there 
is no record to be found in home archives of the 
vessels that were dashed to pieces on the rocks of 
Cap-des-Rosiers. Traditions of the coast, place 
names like L'Anse-Louise and Pointe-a-la-fregate, 
cannon lying buried in the sand in a few fathoms 
under the Bon Ami cliffs; and along the Malbay, 
these tell of experiences which meant loss of hopes 
and of life along this sea front and which must 
have been by no means infrequent. 

The J acques-C artier (we may believe) was a 
square sterned schooner of the old type, out of 
San Malo. In the pride which the Breton sailors 
take in the discoverer of New France, its owners 
had baptized it with the name of their famous 
townsman and for an outward mark and visible 
sign of its identity, they nailed to its stern a large 




MEDALLION PORTRAIT BELIKN hi) To HL OF JACQUES CARTIER, 1704 
DIAMETER 29 INCHES 





II 


P^ 


"^^^^ 


kHP^ 


• ^''IH 




1 


p 




^Pff^ 


J 


;^KM 


m 




H 


E^H 


E_ 




^1, 



CAKTIKR CLIFFS FACING TUK 



LAWRH.NCE RIVER AT ROSIERS COVE 



The tip of the spruce branch rests at the point on the shore where 
the medalUon was found 



WRECK OF THE JACQUES-C ARTIER 163 

circular wooden shield bearing the head of the 
great captain. This was in the early years of the 
1700's, not long before Admiral Walker and Gen- 
eral Hill in their venture from Boston against 
Quebec, came to grief in Gaspe waters. Cartier 
had then been gathered to his fathers well-nigh a 
hundred and fifty years, but his lineaments were 
treasured by the Malouins, perhaps from some 
contemporary sketches, perhaps only from tradi- 
tion, and the wood carver who executed this head 
portrayed a Malouin sailor, black-bearded and 
rugged, with tufted bonnet, thick rolled surtout 
and high buttoned waistcoat; yet fearing perhaps 
lest his purpose might not be fully expressed, he 
cut deep on the back of the medallion the initials 
of the man — J. C. 

We hardly dare say that the J acques-C artier 
was busied in the transport trade between her 
home port and Quebec — it may be so, — perhaps 
more likely so than that she was the schooner of 
a fishing master bound for the fishing grounds of 
Gaspe. Whatever her errand, beaten out of her 
path or caught in a gale too much for her master 



164 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

to weather, dismantled and with masts down; 
perhaps even lured on these horrid rocks by de- 
ceitful lights (for there are stories of such doings 
by the wild settlers of the early days on the Hosiers 
coast) she was driven ashore, her stores, her bones 
and the bodies of her crew scattered along the 
beaches of cliffs and cove. It was one of many 
tragedies, of scores and hundreds that have fallen 
out on the angry coasts of these turbulent waters, 
and it left no ripple in the history of the country. 
Neither here nor there, neither in the wilderness 
that saw its death nor the port that gave it birth 
was ever an entry to show that one more victim 
had been devoured by the Gulf. 

In those early days there were a few houses 
along the beach of the cove built by the Breton 
fishermen who were gradually setthng down to 
an irregular pesche sedentaire, the very beginning 
of the permanent settlements in Gaspe. As one 
descends the lower reaches of the appalling King's 
road, he would have seen a few years ago, one of 
these ancient houses still standing, the first of all 
that caught his eye on the way down. No one 



WRECK OF THE JACQUES-C ARTIER 165 

now seems quite sure how long this house had been 
standing, but at any rate it had been time out of 
mind in the family which then occupied it. Who- 
ever built it in those early seventeen hundred days, 
and whatever else he may have seen of the wreck 
of the J acques-C artier and her crew, this fisherman 
picked up on the beach the sternshield of the 
schooner, battered somewhat by the waves which 
had tossed it back and forth over the stones of 
the shore, but still retaining uninjured the fea- 
tures of the great Captain with his costume and 
still showing deep cut on its reverse and weathered 
side the initials J. C. and the date, 1704; pierced 
with the great wrought iron spikes which had held 
it in its place, but sorely twisted by the waves 
and jolts of the sea which had wrenched it from 
its moorings. The many coats of paint of various 
colors shown one atop of the other where some 
part of the surface had been peeled off were evi- 
dence that it had served a goodly time and had 
seen more than one season's work in the traffic 
of the gulf. Now it was all of a red brown, with a 
narrow yellow band at the edge, while the hair and 



166 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

the beard of the face were black. It was a strong, 
forcible, keen cut face, its thin cheeks and high 
cheek bones reinforced with a deep set eye and fine 
forehead, the head set firm and immovable on a 
robust neck, the tufted bonnet and heavy coats 
expressing the proper garb of the sailor of the time. 
Naturally the finder took his discovery to his 
house where we may well believe it was laid aside 
with other relics of the wreckage of the coast, but 
it was an extraordinary bit of jetsam and instead 
of being left in some corner in the way to be stum- 
bled over by heavy shod and often only too weary 
feet, it was set in the hollow of the window. 
These strange and out of the way objects that 
creep into our houses by way of accident, perhaps 
of discovery or inheritance, the generous remem- 
brance of much traveled friends or the hasty ca- 
price of an impulsive purchase, after a while lose 
their first charm, take on the role of dust gatherers, 
are pushed from mantel to corner and too often 
become at last, shorn of the attraction of novelty, 
despatched to some remote and forgetful coign 
of attic or cellar. 



WRECK OF THE JACQUES-CARTIER 167 

And so it happened that when this fisherman, 
his son or his grandson, found the house too thin 
for the rigorous St. Lawrence winters and under- 
took to keep the weather out by adding a new skin 
both outside and inside, the old medalHon of 
C artier, no longer a novelty and now in the way, 
was left in the window hole while the window itself 
was closed up by the battens outside and the ceiled 
wall inside. 

There is no one to say when this happened, but 
four years ago Marcil Smith, inheritor and owner 
of the Uttle house, half Enghsh and half French of 
name but all Canayen in spirit, came to the con- 
clusion that the house, wracked by the storms of 
many years, had reached the end of its possibilities 
as a shelter for human beings and so proceeded to 
tear it down in order to build anew on its place. 
In dismantling the sides of the building he opened 
up the lost and forgotten window hole, never 
known to him, and in it found again the Cartier 
medallion hidden away for perhaps well-nigh two 
centuries with its strong face undimmed, its work- 
manship unmarred save for the bruises the waves 



168 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

gave it as they rolled it about on the pebbles of 
the Rosiers beach. And thus as it was found and 
as it lay on the land-wash when the morning sun 
shone over the wreckage of the J acques-C artier 
and the scattered bodies of her crew, so it hangs 
to-day on the wall of the writer's study. 

It is a fact of singular interest that this skillfully 
carved portrait which is quite generally granted 
by Canadian and French historians who have 
studied it and are best qualified to judge, to be the 
oldest representation of the face of Cartier and the 
only one that has come down to us from behind 
the nineteenth century, should have been found 
scarce ten or fifteen miles, as the cormorant flies, 
from the spot in Gaspe Bay where, on a July day 
in 1534, the discoverer of New France set up his 
cross and lilies, taking possession of the new coun- 
try in the name of his king. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE COD-FISHERIES 
OF GASPE 

Procedure in the lime of Nicolas Denys — Same methods fol- 
lowed to-day — Present mode of packing for shipment — The 
arrival of Charles Robin — Early procedure of the Robin 
Establishment — Robin's letters — Capture of the "Bee" 
and "Hope" — Business abandoned on account of Amer- 
ican Revolution — Criticisms of the Robin administration — 
Incoming of the Loyalists settlers — Later fishing establish- 
ments. 

To Gaspe the cod-fishing has been of much more 
moment than to the other cod-producing regions 
of the world. Newfoundland and Norway have 
their timber, their mines, their agriculture, but 
none of these save the timber of its inland wilder- 
ness, has many possibilities for Gaspe. The cod 
ever has been the chief commercial asset of the 
country, the largest factor in its settlement and 
development, and it is likely to continue so to be. 
The venturesome Norman fishermen found their 
way hither very early, but for more than one 
hundred years after the coming of Cartier, indeed 

169 



170 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

up to the arrival of the Recollets at Perce, the fish- 
ing was carried on without permanent settlement 
on the coast. Writing in 1672 Nicolas Denys says: 
"Those who follow the fishing are mostly Nor- 
mans from Honfieur, Dieppe and other small 
harbors of that country, some from Boulogne and 
Calais, Brittany, Olonne and all the country of 
Aulnais. The Basques," he adds, "are the most 
skillful; after them the Rochelle men and those 
from the neighboring islands, then the Bourdelois 
and Bretons." Each year these fishing crews 
made their way across the Atlantic, anchored in 
the bays and coves, made their catch, cured it 
ashore and returned to France with their cargo. 
Sometimes the trip across was made even twice a 
year, once just after the early summer fishing and 
again after the autimm return of the fish, when all 
sailed back to be in time for the Lenten market. 
Even during these years while Denys watched and 
shared in the fishing on the coast, from 1633 to 
1688, and while it was carried on from across the 
sea, the coast was a scene of great activity from 
June to December and brought some hundreds of 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPfi 171 

vessels from the other side. The picture which 
Denys has given of the whole procedure of the 
fishing business in chapter after chapter of his 
Natural History of 1672, presents the minutest 
detail and particular of these operations as then 
carried out from the embarkation on the French 
coast till anchor was again dropped in the home 
ports. With the beginning of permanent settle- 
ment by the fishing folk the methods of the busi- 
ness did not materially alter, as everything still 
depended on the shipmasters who came out from 
France. In the 1700's the settlements were gradu- 
ally attained, bringing with them the storing of 
the fish ashore till convenient transportation could 
be had and Denys's dream of a successful pesche 
sedentaire was realized. 

We have very slender records of this business 
on the coast till the time of the coming of the 
organizer and syndicator of the Gaspe fishing, 
Charles Robin, in 1766. A practical fishing master 
of Gaspe to-day, trained by long experience in the 
Robin establishment, upon reading Denys's ac- 
count, assures me that, mutatis mutandis, that is. 



172 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

due allowance being made for the fact that the 
fishing fleet is now Canadian and not French, the 
methods and processes in vogue now are essentially 
those of two hundred years ago and that time has 
found little to add to the efficiency of the pro- 
cedure. 

It was the business of the beach master then as 
now to keep the beaches well covered with rounded 
stones and pebbles, as free from sand as possible, 
and to see that the boys pulled out all weeds and 
removed all debris. With the same shaped hooks 
and with lines rigged as now, and with the same 
bait, the cod was taken, and pitched from the 
shallops with the same shaped pew. At the split- 
ting table built as to-day were the trancheur, de- 
coleur and picqueur, supplied with fish from the 
same shaped barrow by the same shaped boy. 
The splitters with knives of the ancient pattern 
to-day still grasp the fish by the ''ears" for decapi- 
tation, v/ith one time-honored movement disem- 
bowel it and push the livers into the vat through 
a hole in the splitting table and with another cut 
out the backbone. The liver vat still has its 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPE 173 

wicker for the oil to drain through, and still gives 
off, as the livers stew in the sun, an incense too 
rank to rise heavenward, the special parfumerie 
of the devil, equaled only by the aroma rising from 
the cod heads festering in the sun's heat on the 
plowed fields.* 

It is going on three centuries since the splitters 
at their table stood in half -barrels with their aprons 
running down outside. In describing the work 
at the spHtting table Denys says amongst other 
details : 

The decoleur ''pushes the cod on to the dresser, 
who takes it by the ear with a mitten that he wears 
on his left hand, otherwise he could not hold it 
firmly, places the back against a wooden rod the 
length of the cod, two fingers thick and nailed 
opposite to him on the table to hold the fish steady 
and prevent it from sliding in its fat during the 

* Mr. Dolbel of the Fruing Co. at Grande Greve once told 
me that this appalling and stupefying stench is actually agree- 
able to the fishermen and that when action has been taken by 
the local authorities toward abating the nuisance, the fisher- 
men have been so incensed over the matter as to compel the 
abeyance of such attempts. 



174 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

operation." The decoleur still wears the mitten 
and the table still has the wooden rod. 

As then so now the fish are laid head to tail and 
salted, are arranged on the flakes, grouped en 
mouton at night and in pile on the beach. The 
spruce flakes on a well-constructed beach are 
now as they were then, though the boughs with 
which they were overlain are now being driven 
out by wire netting; * and the mow-shaped piles 
on the beach are sometimes thatched with gaff 
cod laid tail upward, but more often with birch 
rinds, or in heavy weather with sail cloth, as in 
the old days. 

In fact, throughout Denys's description the 
procedure is that still regarded as essential to mak- 
ing good fish. The gentlemen I have referred to 
find a slight difference in the mode of drying the 
fish then and now, and suspect that the old way 
may be the best. Now the fish are spread on the 
flakes flesh up and toward evening turned skin up 

* The introduction of wire netting is regarded a decided 
advance in the curing of the fish as it is less liable to harbor 
the multitude of flies which are attracted by the fish during 
the first days they are on the flakes as well as in damp weather. 




A CATCH OF COD 




SPLITTIXG FISH ON THE BEACH AT PERCfe 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASP£ 175 

for the night. Then they were laid skin up first, 
turned flesh up later in the day and then again 
turned skin up for the night. The old process 
involved another turning, but gave the skin a 
chance to dry first, and the back must be thor- 
oughly dried in all well-cured cod. 

The changed conditions of the coast to-day of 
course have made the final stages in the packing 
for shipment wholly different than formerly. Now 
the fish are packed in tubs and drums containing 
one Portuguese quintal of one hundred and twenty- 
eight pounds for the Brazil markets, in casks of 
four hundred and forty-eight pounds for the 
Mediterranean and West Indies.* The large and 
gaff fish generally go in bulk to Portugal. Not 
every economy is employed in utilizing all parts of 
the fish. Should a Chicago packing house allow 
so much of any of its meat animals to go to waste 

* Mr. Dolbel remarks that the four hundred and forty-eight 
pound cask is a quite recent innovation and being shipped 
by steamer puts the fish on the market much earher in the 
season than was usual by the old system of shipping in bulk 
by small sailing vessels carrying from one thousand eight 
hundred to two thousand five hundred quintals, sailing late 
in September and not often arriving till November. 



176 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

as the fisherman does of his cod a considerable 
margin of profit would be sheared away. The 
cod's head, with its sharp, hard enamel teeth and 
keen-edged bones and delicate flesh, is thrown 
away, the backbone and sounds with their possi- 
bilities for glue and fertilizer are rejected, and the 
livers refined only to a very crude oil for leather 
dressing. Several thousand tons of rejectamenta 
are annually left to waste their sweetness on the 
Gasp6 air. 

It was not until the fall of Quebec that capi- 
taUsts from the Channel Islands became interested 
in this Gaspe fishing, and among the first of these 
were members of the Robin family of Jersey. The 
Robins were established on Bay Chaleur in 1764, 
and probably on Cape Breton as early, doing busi- 
ness in the latter place under the firm name of 
Philip Robin & Co., and in the former at Paspe- 
biac, as Charles Robin & Co., Phihp and Charles 
being brothers. 

When Charles Robin came to Gasp^ the fishing 
was scattered in small establishments and without 
organization. Though his purpose was to seek 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPE 177 

locations for new establishments on the capital 
he represented, yet the outcome was the develop- 
ment of a concern with interests so wide upon 
the coast and influences so commanding upon 
the greater part of the fishing industry as to prac- 
tically consolidate and control the entire business 
without serious competition for nearly a century 
and to set the pace for all future undertakings 
along this line. The firm name has changed with 
time, but till 1886 it was Charles Robin & Co., 
then took the form C. Robin & Co., Ltd. A few 
years later Collas & Co. amalgamated with the 
old firm and the title became The Charles Robin- 
Collas Co., Ltd. Up to this time the capital of 
the business was all in Jersey, and the entire 
transaction of the fishing was carried out in ac- 
cordance with orders from across the sea. In 
1904 Collas & Whitman of Halifax entered the 
company, and the business was for a while the 
C. Robin-Collas Co., Ltd., with headquarters at 
Hahfax; but now it has taken on the unfamiliar 
name of Robin, Jones and Whitman and the 
mystic letters C. R. C, which have been both 



178 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

sacred and execrated in Gasp^ for more than a 
centur}^, are now on the road to obhvion. To- 
day with the main estabUshment at the his- 
toric location, Paspebiac, the company controls 
twenty-eight fishing stations all along the shores 
of Gaspe from Bay Chaleur to well up the mouth 
of the St. Lawrence and on the north shore of the 
river and the Labrador. 

When Robin arrived in Gasp6 he found an es- 
tablishment at Bonaventure controlled by William 
Smith and with him entered into business relations, 
Smith gaining control of the stations up the Bay 
and Robin devoting his attention to acquiring or 
erecting new stations on the coast from Paspebiac 
down. Smith and Robin had a good many 
disagreements and finally ceased to cooperate. 
Robin's enterprises were proving fortunate when 
the American war broke out and his serious trou- 
bles began. 

It has been my very good fortune through the 
favor of the General Manager of the Robin estab- 
lishments and directly with the aid of Richardson 
Tardif, Esq., of Perce, to gain access to extracts 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPfi 179 

from the letter books of Charles Robin kept among 
the records of the Paspebiac house. The letters 
of the earliest years of the establishment seem to 
have been lost and the first in the book is dated 
June 5, 1777, just at the commencement of his 
troubles with the Americans. Writing this month 
to his brother John at Neirechak he congratulates 
him on his narrow escape from capture and his 
safe arrival. They had apparently both started 
together on the return from one of many trips to 
Jersey, each in his own vessel and the fleet ac- 
companied by a convoy, but they were overhauled 
by an American freebooter "the same that ruined 
us last year in Neirechak," and one of the vessels 
was captured. The sailing-masters had been wise 
enough to take out French papers at Jersey and 
with the help of the French flag completed their 
disguise and got clear, though his brother was 
separated from the rest of the fleet during the 
attack. Just about a year after, June 30, 1778, he 
writes to his brother Philip at Jersey an account 
of the capture of his vessels, the Bee and Hope, 
at the station at Paspebiac. 



180 THE HEART OF GASPE 

''On the 11th instant at about 11 o'clock at 
night, two American privateers schooners of 45 
tons, 2 carriage guns, 12 swivels and forty-five 
men each put alongside of the Bee & Hope and 
boarded them, there were but 3 men on board 
each, being all employed in the fishery and not 
expecting a visit from them so early, as otherwise 
the Bee could have kept them off had all the 
people been on board, she being the only vessel 
arrived for sometime was unloaded in a week which 
obliged us to put her guns in her hole as she would 
not bear them on deck in so wild a Road without 
ballast & it could not be the case without we had 
determined to make no fishing ourselves, an object 
of Qtls. 2000 which I thought was worth our at- 
tention. The ' Hope ' had Qtls. 1400 fish on board, 
was to take Qtls. 200 more the next day & 
sail for Lisbon in a few days. They (the Priva- 
teers) sent her off the 13th and began to take 
everything out of the stores and ship them on 
board the 'Bee.' She was rigged & was going off 
the 15th; after which departure the Americans 
came to our Habitation to take me away, but I 
had fled to the woods the night before mistrusting 
it — however that morning three ships appearing, 
viz.; His Majesty's ships 'Hunter' and 'Viper,' 
and Mr. Smith's ship Bonaventure — the latter 
was here the first and fired at them, on their ap- 
proach the Americans took in their Privateer all 
the dry goods they could come at and went away. 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPE 181 

I had concealed a little quantity (a third of the 
goods) which they could not come at — they had 
found the best part of our furs which they put 
on board, but having coiled the cable on them were~ 
obliged to leave them behind as well as the powder 
and ammunition, which I did not expect, neither 
that they would leave the ship without setting 
her on fire — both Privateers having been taken 
since at Restigouche so that I have recovered my 
goods to a trifle which they bartered with the 
Indians for canoes for their escape. I am to 
pay I salvage on the 'Bee.' The 'Hunter' and 
'Viper' were laying in Gaspe but being informed 
by Captain Fainton of Perce of the Privateer 
being here they set out — however they were too 
late to retake the 'Hope.' Capt. John Boyle of 
H. M. S. 'Hunter' has promised to leave one 
of his ships in the Bay for our protection. The 
'Bee' is in ballast with ten men constantly on 
board in the day time who watch at night when 
there are thirty men on board and the shore gang 
is ready to join them in case of alarm. 

" I keep four shallops fishing & the Perce Gang, 
but they don't absent themselves at night, the 
crew sleeping on board." 

Nervousness and anxiety are writ large all 
through this very disconnected letter, but the 
times had indeed become nerve-wracking for one 



182 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

whose argosies were all on this coast. Very soon 
again he writes of more trouble: 

July 25, 1778, ''Neptune left for Miscou to 
collect fish — was taken the next day by Am. 
Privateer of 2 guns & 26 swivels with Qtls. 1050 
fish which they put in their Privateer and sank 
the shallop — they also took another shallop be- 
longing to the place, which shallop has since been 
retaken by H. M. ship 'St. Peter,' the Privateer 
escaped. Altho there are armed ships of war 
stationed in the Gulf, these small Privateers find 
means to be along the shore. 

"The 'Bee' is still fully manned & you may be 
persuaded we shall do our utmost to defend our- 
selves and property — these are very embarassing 
times and heavy charges upon my weary shoulders, 
this is no more a place for an Enghshman, the in- 
habitants being all inclined toward the Americans. 

"Vessels to call at Falmouth for orders & how 
to proceed in case Jersey should be taken." [War 
with France was then imminent.] 

Before the season was over his apprehensions 
got the best of Robin and he returned to Jersey 
where he remained till the summer of 1783. In 
April of this year he gives a letter of instructions 
to Capt. George Neil of the brig Paix for his 
guidance on arrival at Paspebiac, telling him 



i 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPfi 183 

among other things to ''plant potatoes and May 
peas," and he himself reached Paspebiac June 14th. 
Soon after he writes that ''war has impoverished 
this coast amazingly" and complains that the 
Restigouche savages had broken into his store at 
Trocadiguess (Carleton) and had stolen all they 
could take off. 

Whatever may have been the methods adopted 
by Robin in his previous business in dealing with 
his employees, this year 1783, with the renewal 
of his enterprises on the coast, he introduced the 
"truck-system" then in vogue in Newfoundland. 
This was payment to the fishermen for fish taken, 
half in cash and half in goods from the company's 
stores. Doubtless this practice and its abuse laid 
the foundation for the severe aspersions that have 
at times been made upon the relations of the 
employers to the fishermen, for the cash must of 
necessity in large part be spent in the company 
store, thus the company's talent was returned to 
it with usury. The credit for goods led to ad- 
vances to the men which in many cases made them 
almost serfs to the establishment, though by this 



184 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

practice of advances the company was certainly 
the loser. For ninety-nine years this system was 
maintained in the Robin establishments and still 
later in some of the other concerns. 

Charles Robin retired from the fishing in 1802 
a very wealthy man. When the Abbe Ferland was 
writing in 1836 he made some comments on the 
mode of administration of the Robin business 
which had then become the historic procedure. 
Charles Robin was then dead and the heads of the 
house were his nephews. I presume Ferland's 
account a faithful as it certainly is an interesting 
picture of the conduct of the business. 

''Neither of the owners," he says, "resides on 
the property. The head of it [Philip Robin] travels 
in France and Italy; thence by letters communi- 
cates his plans and orders which are carried into 
effect by the Jersey resident [Jacques Robin]. In 
Gaspe the business is conducted by six commis- 
sioners placed two by two [presumably at the 
three large establishments, Paspebiac, Grand River 
and Perce]. These employes must be unmarried 
men, or if married they are not allowed to have 
their wives with them. Very strict regulations 
govern them, entering into the minutest details as 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPfi 185 

to their conduct, even specifying what dishes are to 
be served each day at their table. If these rules 
were faithfully carried out their cuisine w^ould not 
be very costly. Although the emoluments of the 
commissioners are not great, nevertheless no master 
was ever better served than are the MM. Robin. 

'^ Chosen at about the age of fourteen years and 
trained for some time by the heads of the concern, 
these employes are then placed in the establish- 
ments of Gaspe where the interests of the com- 
pany seem to become identified with their own. 
Every second year one of the commissioners of 
each warehouse spends the winter in Jersey in 
order to give an account of the state of affairs. 

''One of the important principles of the MM. 
Robin is to allow no innovations. Many incidents 
are recorded relating to their attachment to the 
established order ; I will cite only one. Their coast- 
ing vessels must always terminate in a long narrow 
stern. A few years ago their head carpenter in 
making a brig for the coast service thought de- 
sirable to give it a square stern, since the wood he 
was using necessitated that shape. Some months 
afterward he received orders to alter it and made 
it over again with the elongated stern. To this 
order was added a solemn injunction always to 
maintain the ancient practise." 

The strictures made by the Abb6 on the effect 
of the Robin fishing trust upon the settlements 



186 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

and their people may present a fair picture of the 
conditions seventy years ago and in the Hght of 
the present it is interesting to read them. 

"The inhabitants of Paspebiac are completely 
dependent on the house of Robin. When the 
government decided to make grants of land to 
the people, M. Charles Robin, who held absolute 
authority here, persuaded the fishermen that it 
would be more to their advantage to have each 
but one piece of ten acres, for the reason that 
cultivation on a larger scale would take their time 
from the fisheries. They allowed themselves to 
be so persuaded and now repent of their folly. 
These small pieces of land furnish but a little 
amount of pasture, and the owners of them are 
obliged to buy everything at the stores of the 
company, who sell to them on credit and to whom 
they are always in debt. 

''When they endeavor to shake off their bond- 
age and carry their fish to other markets, they 
are threatened with a summons for debt before 
the tribunals of which they have a great dread. 
They are forced to submit to the yoke and expiate 
their effort at emancipation by a long penance. 

''The regulations imposed on the agents forbid 
them to advance anything to the fishermen before 
a certain set time; the stores may be full of pro- 
visions, but not a biscuit can be given out before 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPfi 187 

the hour set. As the fishermen are only paid in 
goods they can not lay by anything for the future; 
when they have been furnished with whatever is 
necessary, their accounts are balanced by objects 
of luxury. So it comes about that the girls here 
wear more finery than the grand people of the 
faubourgs of Quebec. 

"Schools are proscribed. 'There is no need of 
instruction for them,' wrote M. Philip Robin to 
his commissioners. 'If they were educated, would 
they be better fishermen?' . . . The fisher- 
man is always in debt to the proprietors, always at 
their mercy, liable whenever his debts have got 
to the point where they can not be paid by the 
fisheries to be put on board any of the ships of the 
company to make a voyage to Europe as a sailor. 
So frequently one finds fishermen who have made 
a voyage to Jersey, Lisbon, Cadiz, Messina, 
Palermo." 

The commentary of the Abbe Ferland probably 
goes farther than the situation really justified. 
Orders from the Jersey headquarters were indeed 
strict, even to a much later day than his. Mr. Tar- 
dif says that he has heard the old hands whose 
recollection runs back to the time of Ferland's 
writing say that the food supplied to the cook 
houses was good and the orders for general sup- 



188 THE HEART OF GASPE 

plies called for salt beef, pork, biscuit, flour and 
chocolate, with rum and tea in modest quantities. 
Charles Robin's letters certainly indicate more 
concern for the welfare of the settlements than 
Ferland gives him credit for. Under date of 
October 26, 1783, he expresses to his Jersey repre- 
sentative his wish that their next vessel shall be 
named ''St. Peter (le patron des pecheurs)" and 
if there is to be another, the Aurora 

"because these names are familiar to the inhabit- 
ants of these parts such as were used by their former 
connections, in time their old manner will wear 
out and they naturally will adopt ours seeing no 
other set of men — this I observe daily, our bor- 
rowing for a time something of their manners 
make us appear more familiar which renders the 
access easier — a contrary measure such as blam- 
ing their dress or their customs and those that 
introduced them in the country to whom this 
generation must yet in a degree be partial, would 
retard that uniformity so very necessary to men 
who must live together and we are obliged by 
principles of generosity to go through the hardest 
part requisite to bring it in for we are the con- 
querors & they the vanquished & such as could 
not leave the country and seek a refuge among 



i 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPfi 189 

their own, being too poor — a hard situation, in- 
deed, which merits the commiseration of every 
feeling breast." 

Then the loyaHst refugees began to come into 
the country from the new States a year after and 
with the aid of Governor Cox were to find settle- 
ments about Paspebiac and thence up the Bay. 
The vessels brought two hundred famihes in July, 
1784, and returned for three hundred families 
more and in view of this impending invasion Robin 
appeals to Governor Cox to leave enough land for 
the use of the fishermen ''whose benefit is immense 
not only in point of introducing wealth in the 
Kingdom but also in contributing to the British 
Marine in a very great measure, since it is allowed 
by all persons that after the coal trade the fishery 
makes or nurses up the most seamen." 

Repeatedly his request was urged upon Gov- 
ernor Cox and two years later we find him writing 
to the Hon. John Collins, Quebec, his views of 
what should be done to improve the condition of 
the inhabitants and picturing the great value of 
the fisheries of Gaspe. ''This bay," he says, 



190 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

''together with Gaspe and the whole coast be- 
tween the two places produces at present about 
Qtls. 50,000 fish and about 1,000 Tierces salmon." 

Referring to Ferland's statement about the 
gaudily dressed fishermaids forced by Mr. Robin's 
administration into unwelcome luxury Mr. Tardif 
comments, "Judging from the inventory books of 
stocks in those days I should be sorry for the 
' grand people of the faubourgs of Quebec ' for all 
the orders for cloth were for molten and serge, 
molten being a heavy blue flannel used largely 
for smocks." 

An interesting note from Robin's letters is the 
following under date of Aug. 12, 1783: ''The 
Guernsey men have settled at Grande Gre^^e." 
These early settlers on the Grande Greve coast 
must have been independent fishermen selling to 
the Robins, for no establishment was organized 
on that shore till 1798 when the Janvrins started 
the business, taken over in 1855 and now con- 
ducted by the Wm. Fruing Co. from Grande 
Greve as a center with a considerable number of 
stations along the coast. 



THE COD-FISHERIES OF GASPfi 191 

I have not attempted to give any details in 
regard to the competitors of the Robin interests 
which have developed on the coast during the past 
half century. Of the Hymans, Le Boutillhier Bros., 
the Le BoutilUers, Marquand & Co., Valpy & Le 
Bas, The Perce Fishing Co., C. Biard & Co., some 
have gone and some remain. It is common con- 
viction on the coast often expressed that the 
fishing is not as good as it was in bygone years, 
that the cod are fewer and the bait scarcer, but 
in old Denys's story of the fishing during the half 
century ending with 1672 there are occasional 
growls over scarcity of bait and if one considers 
how the fishing stations have multiplied on the 
coast and how many more men are employed in 
the business than ever before, then it is but nat- 
ural that the share falling to each man is palpably 
slender by comparison. Mr. Dolbel of the Fruing 
Co., has estimated for me that the number of fish 
taken at his stations amounts to an average catch 
of three to four millions, and if this is a fair figure 
certainly the entire Gaspe coast must afford from 
forty to fifty millions of cod every year. The 



192 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

wonder is that after these nearly three hundred 
years of fishing there is a cod left in all the Gulf. 
Perhaps no one could find a more effective illustra- 
tion of the profluence of that alma mater of all 
life, the sea. 

One might say much of the salmon streams of 
Gasp^, but the pursuit of the gentle art of killing 
the salmon is so wholly apart from the genius of 
this country and so entirely in the control of the 
Sassenac, that it does not appertain. 



THE FORILLON AND THE FATE OF JOHN 
SIMONDS 

The sea was in a savage mood during the long 
years when she was carving out the marvelous 
peninsula of the Forillon. She had found a single 
range of mountains stretching its length out into 
her domain and she sliced it straight and clean 
along the middle from crest to roots; she tore 
away the north half scattering its remnants over 
the bottom of the St. Lawrence, ''our Great River 
of Gaspay," as the Jesuit missioners called it, and 
left the south half with its spruce covered slopes 
falling steeply away to Gaspe Bay. And this is 
the Forillon as it stands to-day with its bare cliffs 
uncovering the very secrets of the mountains at 
the north where the river is near a hundred miles 
across. On this bold sheer gray front no man 
can enter, unless by lucky chance he finds the 
ladder on the rock wall at the portage which the 
Jersey boys and the lobstermen put up, just where 

193 



194 THE HEART OF GASPE 

the skyline sags a little and the cliff settles down 
into rough, rocky steps. I call it a ladder, and if 
two spruce stems with cleats nailed across, most 
of them broken off, make a ladder, they certainly 
do not make the climb up or down inviting or easy. 

It is half a mile or less across this finger of land 
from water to water, from the mouth of the Saint- 
Laurent as it slips into the embrace of the Gulf, 
to the reaches of the Baie-de-Gaspe, but it is a 
half mile of hard puffing climb, if one is going up 
over the clearing and through the spruce woods. 

One single road runs along the peninsula as 
near to the water as the gullied curves of the moun- 
tain side will permit but it is sometimes up and 
sometimes down, with a long pull over the lime- 
stone ledges at the end, where it raises itself to 
the light on Shiphead. From the fishing stations 
of the Grande Greve out to the Cape, it swells and 
it falls as it rides the great hill waves, the little 
fishing beaches to starboard, hardly a boat's 
length in width, embrasured in their rock walls 
which become higher and steeper the farther out 
one goes; on the port side, the clearing and the 



FATE OF JOHN SIMONDS 195 

woods, the one sometimes climbing high and the 
other stretching down low so that the road passes 
through it. In this distance of about four miles 
the houses of the farmer-fishermen are scattered 
along at uneven distances usually hugging the 
walled beaches, to be close to the fishing, cluster- 
ing together in places, as at L'Anse-Saint-George 
and L'Anse-au-Sauvage. Once I knew all these 
fine Jersey and Guernsey families — the Dolbels, 
Gaveys, Bartletts, Lehuquets, Roberts, Middle- 
tons, Cassavies, Esnoufs, Simonds, Bichards — 
and the slender intermixture of real Canayens. 
These are men who do great deeds both on land 
and sea, for they wrest from their chilly farms, 
tipped up at angles that would seem to defy the 
laws of gravitation, their potatoes, oats and hay — 
a living for themselves and their beasts; from the 
sea, by the common hardihood of the coast, their 
little bank accounts. 

Perhaps somewhere else in the world there may 
be such panoramas as greet the eyes from the 
summit cliffs of this half eaten mountain ridge, but 
I do not know where to look for them. From any 



196 THE HEART OE (JASPfi 

hi^h Hpoi })cyond the ''Kind's Road " which crosses 
the peninsula at Ihe Clrande Greve and continues 
up over the cliffs of the river shore clear to Rimou- 
ski, out to the point at Shiphead Cape, if the ob- 
server selects his outlook where the spruce woods 
do not hang too heavy, there at the north stretches 
out the tremendous unbounded river whose further 
shore can only be guessed in the invisible distance. 
Over its great channel, discharging from the heart 
of the continent or drawing up into it, the ship- 
ping of all countries, he sees, happily remote, 
evidence of human restlessness and interchange 
which has left this little shore unsullied, for it 
can not be touched by any sea craft above a small 
schooner's size. Toward the east the St. Lawrence 
of the land gently slips into the embrace of the 
St. Lawrence of the sea, while southward, beyond 
the hill slopes at his feet, is the more placid water 
of the bay, stretching far up some 16 miles into 
the land, lying in an ancient valley which once 
lay as truly high between the mountain ridges 
as does to-day any other valley in all the Appa- 
lachian mountains. 



FATE OF JOHN SIMONDS 197 

The observer may add his own selection of fore- 
ground, — the spruce, the vivid turf patched with 
the brilHancy of the pasture flowers, the gently 
molded mounds between the mountain rills. 

One sunmier my varied fortunes on the coast 
led me into the home of one of the fishermen at 
L'Anse-au-Sauvage. I had been through this Cove 
on my rambles and was attracted by the pretti- 
ness of its location, for only here, at St. George 
and at the Grande Greve have the hill streams 
cut broad enough to make house room down close 
to the shore. There are as many as four or even 
five houses right at Indian Cove and one of these 
has an "air" which bespeaks more than the cus- 
tomary prosperity, in the fishing and farming. 
These are the homes of the Simonds and it was 
as long ago as 1798 that William Simonds, founder 
of the family, came to this remote spot from the 
island of Guernsey and settled for the fishing. In 
the little burial ground alongside the Chapel at 
the top of the hill as one comes down the winding 
road to the cove, stands the gravestone of this 
grandfather of the settlement. My haven of rest 



198 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

for a few weeks was just beyond the dip of the 
Cove as one chmbs the hill beyond it after crossing 
the little bridge. This was the home of John 
Bichard, fine old Guernseyman, and, what was 
quite as much to the point of my needs and hopes, 
of his wife too. Back from the road, across the 
rising pasture and well out on the cliff overhanging 
the water, John had built his home, just a little 
way from the grassy mounds which still marked 
the cellar walls of his father's house. Like his 
father and like all the coastmen of the older days, 
he had laid every stone and timber and board, 
cut every sash, paneled and built every door, driven 
every nail with his own hand, and would have 
shamed himself to live in a house of another's mak- 
ing. 

With the joy of the sea in his heart, passed on 
to him from generations of seafaring men and 
enlarged by his own life, he had set his house with 
back to the road, gallery to the bay, and from that 
gallery his- keen sea eye could sweep the water 
from the smoke clouds of Sandy Beach at the 
mouth of Gaspe Basin out to Plateau Island, the 



FATE OF JOHN SIMONDS 199 

full stretch of the bay waters. Now, I take a sea 
eye on this coast to be one which can distinguish 
two miles away the floating logs which have es- 
caped the booms at the lumber mills near the 
Basin, and with a glass tell which are spruce and 
which are hemlock. Such an eye lets spruce float 
on out to be washed ashore outside on the beaches 
about the Barachois, but if a hemlock or pine 
passes, a boat soon sets out from the shore for it, 
by skillful maneuvering it is made fast and towed 
ashore. We need not ask who owns the log; sup- 
pose it is branded, it is flotsam and becomes jet- 
sam, all other claims to the contrary. Like all the 
other houses on the Forillon, the front and the gal- 
lery face full south, catching all the heat of the 
summer sun, without hope of shadow, and all the 
winds that blow inshore and offshore up and down 
this bay. Off at the left, up on the cliff are the 
flakes and stage, but the fishing beach hes far 
down the cliff face full seventy-five feet and the 
way down is the usual steep zigzag of footpath 
and ladders. It is not only down this path to 
reach the beach, the boats and tackle and splitting 



200 THE HEART OF GASPE 

house, but it is up ladder and path to get back 
again, and when John Bichard has to back up his 
fish to the flakes, it is no fairies' dance. 

In this house I found my sohtude and my home 
—if home means every thoughtful attention and 
kindness, exquisite simplicity and perfect cleanli- 
ness. From my bed, in the half-awake hour of 
the morning, I could watch the fishing fleet shoot 
out of the coves all the way up the bay, and by 
the time they had passed ''outside," my breakfast 
was waiting on my laziness. I have made some 
interesting discoveries in Gaspe, but that first 
morning of my waking in my corner room out 
from among the soft comforts of my bed, I dis- 
covered, and I claim to be the first to make this 
find, a real bath towel hanging demurely in its 
proper place — the fuzzy, ruggy sort that foflow 
us in the haunts of home and town. I am sure 
no such appanage of culture was known on this 
coast when my entry was made ten years before. 
But I was the guest, and I soon found the house 
was mine. 

When it suited my deliberate soul, my lazyship. 



FATE OF JOHN SIMONDS 201 

to turn out for breakfast, my table was set for 
one, shoved up against the window through which 
was the view of the woodpile, the stage, the knoll 
on which little Ralph, the boy of the house, had 
set his flagmast with the Union Jack at the peak, 
in honor I think of the guest. Porridge, wild 
strawberries and cod caught an hour before, left 
nothing to be desired. If the coffee was not quite 
really coffee, yet this is a land of tea drinkers and 
it was at least better than the brand of drink that 
passes under the name of coffee in the hotels of 
London; and as the sugar was served in a china 
porringer covered with great pink lustered grapes, 
and the cream in an old Jersey gold lustered jug 
touched off with sprigs of green, the coffee with 
such accessories was unsurpassed. 

It adds unspeakably to a man's enjoyment of 
such surroundings when there is evidence of a real 
solicitude for one's comfort — not the conven- 
tional oversight you pay for, but the thing that 
comes as near to motherliness as one who has lost 
all mothering may hope to find, and at every turn 
there was now the inquiring voice and now the 



202 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

inquiring look of the gentle-spirited woman who 
made my slightest fancied wish her burden. Well, 
it is not to tell of the spirit of this home, of its 
becalming quietness which dispelled the nasty, 
tangled cares and complexities of the world I had 
left behind, nor of the personality of its mem- 
bers, that I started this sketch, — rather to record 
a touch here of old Guernsey, the island out 
of which the Bichard stock, husband and wife, 
had come, for Mr. Bichard's grandfather was 
among the early settlers and Mrs. Bichard was a 
Simonds. The house contained but one book, and 
I here should be expected to say that that was 
the family bible — but it was not — and so far as I 
know there was not a bible in the place. Can 
any but an overstuffed soul whose daily commerce 
has to be with books appreciate the rich fallow- 
ness of a spot where no book stands between him 
and his maker and he can give his mind freedom 
for a while from thinking other people's thoughts? 
The one literary article in the house was a paper 
covered brochure entitled: Le Naufrage Anglais, 
a thrilling story of adventure and shipwreck on 






FATE OF JOHN SIMONDS 203 

the Newfoundland ice in the early fishing days. 
So the evening with nothing to read (this ship- 
wreck story already learned by heart) gave the 
opportunity for homely talk of the countryside 
and its reminiscences of a long life. It was on such 
an occasion, sitting in the gallery in the long 
twilight that John told me the story of John 
Simonds. 

It was like a bit out of Guernsey, if one could 
imagine the hills across the bay the line of the 
French coast, the rock wall down to the fishing 
beach, such a cliff as commands the Channel 
waters; for the speech was of the home island and 
I am sure the gentleness and honesty of soul 
showed the touch of the Guernsey of a century 
ago. John Bichard had been a fisherman from 
the start and his start was in this very spot of 
his birth. Only once as a young man had he 
felt the call to get out into the larger world 
and with some of his neighbors he had tried 
life out on the Iowa prairies, but it was not 
for long. The call of the sea soon brought him 
back and now at sixty I could hear him crawhng 



204 THE HEART OF GASPE 

softly down the stairs at three or four of the morn- 
ing to get his boat off for the fishing — and at four, 
five or six in the afternoon he would be back with 
his fish still to split before he could stretch himself 
out for his rest — a long day indeed and often a 
slender one in results, but it is the hfe of the coast. 
I have heard John Bichard say he felt safer in 
his boat than he did ashore; I never heard another 
fisherman or sailor say this thing and it became 
intelligible to me only when I had got my share of 
bumps on the rickety ladder which led down to 
the fishing beaches. 

So it was of an evening on the gallery, his wife 
standing in the doorway and Ralph, the little son 
of the house, sitting on the edge of the gallery 
floor and swinging his feet while his jaws munched 
away on the sweet green pods of the horse bean, 
that John Bichard told me this story: 

''Did somebody — mebbe dey was tellin' ye, 
bout how Jawn Seemo was froze in hees flat? 
Well, mebbe not. Well, Mr. Seemo, de old man, 
dere in de cove, my brudder in law, he had two 
brudders — dere was Peter an James — an Jawn, 
tree sons of William Seemo who came out from 



FATE OF JOHN SIMONDS 205 

Guernsey, oh long ago. Peter he fell from de rocks 
one day and he was kill, and den Jawn one day 
he goes shootin' birds down Shiphead in hees flat. 
Well, it was in December and d'ice was along both 
shore, on dis shore in de bay and on de river too 
and so dose times d'ice come togedder from both 
shores an it smash into each odder out dere be- 
yond Shiphead. Jawn — well he was only young 
feller bout nineteen or eighteen, an first he know 
hees flat out in d'ice an caught by d'ice from dat 
side Shiphead and dis side Shiphead. Well — d'ice 
pinch an shove him an he try to get out an first 
he know — it was cold an his oars got all wet, cov- 
ered wid ice, his flat a tippin, first he know hees 
oars, bote of dem slide overboard and he lose dem. 

"Course dey wasn't so many people living roun 
here den an first nobody see him, but by an by 
somebody see him an said: Jawn lost hees oars. 
By an by two tree men dey get togedder and one 
he said : I have me big f amlee but I go after Jawn 
Seemo if you go too, but de odders dey were afraid 
to go cause of d'ice. We can do it, say de firs 
man, we can make land at St. Peter or Sheang 
Blong, but no, de odder men dasent. So nobody 
go. Well, by an by dey see wid de glass Jawn 
pullin hes flat up on d'ice an was laborin hard 
way out dere beyond Shiphead. Well, nobody 
ever see Jawn Seemo again an his poor fader and 
no one never know what become of him. 

"W-e-1-1, tirty year after dat, my wife her 



206 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

cousin George West was over at Anticost wid hees 
schooner an dere was a captain from Madeleine 
islands an course dey talk, an dey tell stories, an 
captain from Madeleine islands he tell how he 
foun, long, long time ago, an he save a man in 
hees flat. He say de man was froze to death an 
he bury him on Madeleine islands. An nobody 
know who he was, but he had hees name on hees 
jersey, Jawn Seemo, but nobody dere know who 
he was. An so when George West come back he 
tell de old man hees son was found after tirty 
years an he was buried on Madeleine islands, an 
ole Mr. Seemo he very glad to know hees son was 
not lost but he buried and he come round and tell 
us all about it." 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 

Situation — Relation to Gaspe — Original settlement — Physical 
characters and geology — The Demoiselles — Entry I.; its 
people; scenery — Amherst I.; civic center; its harbors and 
sand bars — Grindstone I.; its gypsum cliffs — Ho^ise Harbor 
— The Great Lagoon — Alright I. — Grand Entry — Grosse 
Isle — Coffin I. — Menace to navigation — Wrecks on the 
Islands — Bishop Mountain's experiences in 1850 — Mag- 
dalen Island pony — Discovery of the islands by Cartier 
— Later French and English visits in the 16th century — 
Grant to Denys — To Doublet — To St. Pierre — To Sir Isaac 
Coffin — Land tenure established by Coffin — Recent attempts 
at development — Kingdom of fish — The ancient walrus 
hunt — Brian I.; Cartier's account of it — The Bird Rocks; 
their wonderful bird colony; history; their human tragedies. 

The Magdalen Islands are a chain of disjected 

and sea-wracked remnants of continental land 

Ijdng in the very heart of the Gulf, ninety miles 

from Newfoundland at the east, one hundred from 

Nova Scotia at the south and one hundred and 

fifty from Gaspe at the northwest. Their land is 

of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, their 

government of Quebec, their commerce in the 

commodities of the sea, and their spirit that of 
207 



208 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

the Acadian communities of the 18th century, the 
purest expression remaining in Canada of the days 
of Louisbourg and Grande-Pre. To the outer world, 
particularly to the navigator of the turbulent 
waters of the Gulf, they stand to-day as they have 
stood since the beginning of navigation in these 
waters, a fearful menace to the sailor and his craft. 

Gaspe is a stepmother to the Magdalens. By na- 
ture she has little in conamon with them, whether 
in history, origin, scenery or conamercial associa- 
tion, but she, with the province of Quebec behind 
her, extends to them the protection of her aegis in 
the administration of civil and criminal law. They 
are far away from Gaspe and it is a long and ar- 
duous stretch for the arm of Justice, it strains her 
a little. But Gaspe lets her wards go at that and 
leaves them to their more natural and intimate 
relations with Nova Scotia. 

The Magdalens are an island Arcady; they have 
not yet received from any pen the just and sym- 
pathetic portrayal which their fascinations of 
situation, their little romances of history, the 
tragedies of their simple living and the charms of 




y 

CHAKT OF THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 



210 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

their isolation invite. There are stories abroad 
about them, of late years sterile magazine articles 
not a few, mostly the work of the tripper whose 
soul is in his fountain pen but who has never yet 
caught the spirit of the islands or of their people. 
One must know the physical aspect of even such 
small patches of land if he is to understand the 
reasons of their existence and the conditions that 
govern the Ufe upon them. The chart of these 
islands shows them stretched out like a long key 
lying crosswise of the waters, with its axis north- 
east and southwest, the direction of all the funda- 
mental folds of the rocks which govern the topog- 
raphy of the lands of the lower Gulf. If the eye 
will follow the 20-fathom line on the chart it will 
be seen what a tremendous rock platform has 
been carried away by the waves in the gradual 
washing of the land to this slight depth. An ele- 
vation of the sea bottom 20 fathoms would throw 
all the chain of islands into a single land mass 
which would have several hundred times the area 
of the land now remaining. Even the 10-fathom 
line sweeps about all the islands, tying them into 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 211 

one and reaches out to take in Brion island at the 
north and the Great and Little Bird Rocks further 
to the north and east. Brion and the Bird Rocks 
are to-day distant and isolated platforms of sand- 
stone with sheer sea cliffs. The Magdalens them- 
selves are really but mere specks of rock or land 
but they are fringed with sand dunes and spits and 
tied to one another by tremendous bars which 
the seas from east and west have piled up into a 
double chain, leaving between the great interior 
lagoons, Basque Harbor, House Harbor, the Great 
Lagoon and its branch at the extreme north be- 
hind the dunes of Grosse Isle and Old Harry. 
In these piles of sand the sea has tried to bury the 
bits of land its still unsated appetite has left be- 
hind, tossing back to them the feeble fragments 
of their own ruins. 

The islands of this archipelago seem on the chart 
to be of considerable size but the most of them is 
sand, the actual area of rock land small and re- 
solved into little insular units of soil and popula- 
tion. And when we speak of the Magdalens as a 
geographic group we must include Brion and the 



212 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

Birds at the north, even though the broad ten 
mile channels that separate Brion from the others 
both north and south have been swept clean of 
the sand bars that may once have stretched across 
them. Geologically these northern islands are all 
of one piece with the interwoven chain of the 
Magdalens. There is a fundamental and twofold 
difference of quality in all the members of this 
group; that of the sand with its broad reaches of 
undulated dunes here and there, its straggling 
growth of stunted spruce and dune grass, its arid, 
wasted, desert surfaces broken in twain now and 
again by the sea gullies which make an outlet for 
the interior waters and an inlet for the tides; and 
that of the rock land with its rounded and grace- 
ful demoiselle hills, its richly fertile soil, grassy 
treeless knolls and low-lying flat plateaus. On 
each of the habitable land patches, from Amherst, 
the largest, to Grosse Isle and Northeast Cape, 
the smallest, there is some of all of these distin- 
guishing contours present. 

These differences are simple but they are de- 
pendent on the geology of the islands and this is 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 213 

the way of it. Broadly speaking, the rocks of the 
island units are of three kinds, first, blood red soft 
sandstones which give an extraordinary brilliancy 
to the coloring of the shore cliffs; these are hori- 
zontal, flat and lie low about the shores. Then, 
second, gray hard sandstones, which usually under- 
lie the red and stand up in stouter, higher cliffs; 
while the third is the volcanic rocks which stand 
often in dark somber cliffs or low sheets but usually 
rise into the beautifully symmetrical domes that 
give the graceful skylines to the islands; the de- 
moiselles, as we have called them, taking the name 
from the hill on Amherst long known to the people 
as La Demoiselle. Quite incidental or accessory 
to these varieties of rocks are the abundant masses 
of gypsum standing out here and there in glisten- 
ing white or particolored cliffs, where the volcanic 
lavas have come in contact with the sandstones 
which they have broken through. These are some 
plain facts about the islands as a whole, and to 
one who is interested in studying the ancient his- 
tory of the Gulf, the geology of the Magdalens is 
inviting and intensely instructive. 



214 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

The traveler to the Magdalens by the cus- 
tomary route will reach them by boat from Pic- 
tou, Nova Scotia, and so come upon them from 
the south. This is the only estabhshed line of 
approach. Lucky souls independent of prescribed 
procedure may approach them from other direc- 
tions, but usually one's acquaintance with the 
chain will begin at the South. The petite Lady 
Sybil which makes this route twice a week, 
touches on every alternate trip first in the wee 
hours of early dawn at the busy fishing port of 
Etang-du-Nord on the west side of Grindstone 
Island; but the seeker after truth is usually asleep 
or seasick at this juncture and his first impressive 
glimpse of the islands is likely to be the blue, 
gently molded breasts of Entry Island at the east, 
rising starboard into the soft morning light. The 
way of the boat is through the narrow, risky chan- 
nel which lies between the hills and meads of En- 
try and the long nine mile sand spit which reaches 
its arm out from Amherst toward the east as if to 
grasp the one island in all the group that has main- 
tained its independence of the entangling bars. 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 215 

Entry is the portal, the He de V Entree of the early 
navigators who came in from the southeast by- 
way of Cape Ray and Cabot Strait. Isolated 
from the rest of the group it is unlike them in 
many ways though but a fragment of the same 
fabric. It is a traveler's paradise — that's all. 
From its row of rounded demoiselles which girdle 
the eastern shore and barricade the lower western 
plateau against the eternal tooth of the sea, an 
unbroken carpet of green unrolls, furling itself in 
and out over the little knolls and fens down to 
the parterre of red sandstones which line the 
channel. 

At the summits of its heights, if the day be calm 
and fair, one might fancy himself on some /Egean 
isle as the eye sweeps the blue domain of the sea 
to the east and south, just catching the smoky 
outline of the Cape Breton shore in the scud of 
haze. At the west and north stretch out the other 
islands of the chain, fading away into a low nimbus 
toward Alright, and the sand bars which stretch 
away to Old Harry. At one's feet are the graceful 
volcanic mounds which are like the parasitic cones 



216 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

on the sides of Etna; between them he deep sink 
holes where the gypsum in the rocks has been 
dissolved away, a squidgy mat of water weed 
growing over their tops; down on the lower land 
are pastures sprinkled with wild strawberries and 
little quagmires filled with fleurs-de-lis. It boots 
little that the island is shadeless for even the Au- 
gust sun is bridled by the breeze or tempered by 
the redintegrating sea fog. The island steamer 
passes but never touches Entry and the inspiring 
solitude of the place rests partly on the conscious- 
ness that once there, one can not get away save 
by an extraordinary effort. 

The islanders themselves heighten the content 
of the visitor, for they have won from sea and 
soil reasonable comfort and with genuine solici- 
tude for the comfort of another, do not obtrude 
themselves upon one's designs. They are not 
many, the Entry people, but they are select and 
silent. They may be perhaps 30 families in cot- 
tages scattered back of the plateau along the road 
which runs from the sandy West Point back to the 
light on the southeast hill. They are Scotch and 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 217 

Irish, and constitute the largest Anglo-Saxon set- 
tlement in the Magdalens, the lesser ones being 
at Grosse Isle and Old Harry. Not a Frenchman 
is left in the place nor has there been for more 
than one generation. So while they are not of the 
primitive island stock, these sturdy folk, coming 
in mostly from Nova Scotia, have seen well-nigh 
a century pass without the addition of a single 
outsider, save by marriage. So they are all of the 
aristocracy and each is related in nearer or re- 
mote degree to everybody else. In-breeding is 
bad for the race, it violates the primary laws of 
eugenics. Behold in the sturdy boys and whole- 
some girls of the present generation how nature 
on Entry Island laughs at these laws. The no- 
ticeable air of general average material comfort 
here, one fails to see in the other islands. Here 
the intrusive and prosperous fish merchant is con- 
spicuous by his absence. 

But nowhere else in all the group is the promise 
of the soil so well realized. The Magdalens are 
the kingdom of fish, their waters teem with an 
extraordinary profusion of them, poured out 



218 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

freely on e^-ery coast; the cod, the herring, the 
mackerel; the cod again in the autumn, the lob- 
ster in early summer and again (by gracious ex- 
ception of the law) in the fall, and to these crops, 
the harvest of which depends largely on the in- 
clination of the fishermen, is to be added the 
seal catch when the ice comes down from the 
north. 

This is the historic wealth of the sea and in the 
face of it the soil of the islands cries idly. Yet the 
soil is of extraordinary fertility — in spite of fogs 
and winds the hay and grain grow bountifully and 
the return of potatoes and other buried roots, 
with the very slightest elTort at cultivation, is 
amazing. The Entry people have taken advan- 
tage of the soil, have fished less and farmed more 
and this fact seems to account for their noticeable 
comfort. For every head of man, there seem to 
be five head of cattle of excellent stock. Milk 
is freer than fresh water, butter and cheese and 
the things to which milk contributes are at hand 
— and yet one knows nothing of exports from the 
island save perhaps a little by way of cheese. In 







*! 


B 




^m 



ENTRY ISLAND. OUTSIDE CELLAR BUILT OF A CUALOUPE SAWN 
IN TWO AND THATCHED WITH SODS 




ENTRY ISLAND. 



l.AM) HOME, WITH DEMOISELLE TOPOGRAPHY 
IN THE BACKGROUND 



J 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 219 

fact the islanders live on themselves and enjoy 
an independence which cares little whether the 
boat runs or not. 

To get out of Entry — if one must — some husky 
fellow will set you over to Amherst by sail or 
gasolene, and once there the traveler is in the 
largest of all the islands, and the center of their 
political and civic activity. The boat landing at 
Amherst is at a mere atom of land, hardly visible 
on the chart, but tied to the rest of the island by 
a broad sand bar. It is Mt. Gridley, bearing the 
name, it is said, of an American who a century 
ago, started a fish business here, but bearing too, 
what is much more to the point to-day, an historic 
inn which for two generations has cordially met 
and hospitably satisfied the demands of the trav- 
eler — the only thing of the kind on the islands. 
Mt. Gridley is a pretty three-cornered grass plot 
whereon mushrooms scatter themselves; off toward 
the west it ends at the Inlet which leads into the 
Basin, a harbor for all the fishing craft, buried in 
the armpit of the great nine mile sand bar and pro- 
tected at the east by the little bar of "Fishtown" 



220 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

which joins Mt. Gridley and the real island. On the 
''Fishtown" bar are the stores of the merchants 
and the shacks and cook houses of the fishermen. 
The bar leads toward the foot of Demoiselle hill, 
whose graceful sunamits rise into the sea wall and 
this hill whose name is a part of the history of 
the place, stands as the type of all the "demoi- 
selles" of all the islands — a mass of outpoured lava. 
Though by virtue of her ancient name she stands 
for all these rounded hills, she is not the highest. 
That little honor goes to Entry, where St. Lawrence 
hill rises to a height of 650 feet. Such a figure as 
that seems rather unimpressive, but in a region 
of lowland even such a height is a point of great 
vantage. Between the Demoiselle and Mt. Grid- 
ley lies the only outside harbor on all the island 
coast, Pleasant Bay, a pretty name for a summer 
day, but of all roadsteads the most treacherous, 
for it lies open to the northeast whence the storms 
blow up almost without warning in these uncertain 
waters. Scores of craft have broken their bones 
on the sand bar here, caught by a sudden shift 
in the wind before they could get out and around 



THE MAGD.\LEN ISLANDS 221 

into the basin. From the Demoiselle westward 
the island runs for ten miles and its inland surface 
is crossed by irregular volcanic hills, less symmet- 
rical than in the other islands. The fields are 
less inviting too than in some of the sister islands 
because the soft red sandstone which lends so 
much to the fertility of the soil is lacking here save 
as one gets way across the island to the Sou'west 
Point. Amherst (it is not Sir Jeffrey's but Gen- 
eral William's name the island bears; the older 
French name is Havre Aubert, still the official 
post-office designation of this port) is dotted over 
with homes and its population is not less than 
1500 — a population that is almost of pure Acadian 
extraction. After the fall of Louisbourg, some of 
the scattered peasantry and fishermen from the 
devastated French villages of Nova Scotia and 
Cape Breton found their way to the Magdalens. 
They constituted a population which soon became 
fixed and fixed with it became their language, so 
that nowhere in Canada is the ancient tongue of 
the Acadians so well retained as here. 
In a civic way, the islands as we have said con- 



222 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

stitute a subcounty of Gaspe, and of this sub- 
county Amherst is the shire island with its palais- 
de-justice, its gaol, its hall of records alongside 
the post-office of Havre Aubert and to all these 
on court days Joanna Shea's boarding house, now 
in its braver new dress dignified as Shea's Hotel, 
is an indispensable accessory; for county business 
brings judge and attorneys from the mainland 
on this deep water circuit and Shea's Hotel affords 
most unexpected fulhiess of comfort. 

At the time of my first visit to Amherst there 
stood on Mt. Gridley an Anglican church, its win- 
dows gone, its clapboards stripped away and its 
altar vestments frayed and discolored. Even this 
trace of Protestant worship is now gone, and of a 
population of 1526 "souls" on Amherst, 1525 are 
Catholics. 

Two great sand bars run north from Amherst 
and inclose the Basque Harbor which finds its 
connection with the sea by tickles or guUies too 
narrow to make a passage except for the smallest 
craft at highwater, but the inhabitants drive along 
these bars from island to island fording the tickles 




GROSSE ISLE HEAD. VIEW FROM THE NORTH, SHOWi~>JG A SINGLE WAVE- 
EATEN DEMOISELLE HILL AND MOST OF THE SETTLEMENT 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 223 

as best they can, always a perilous passage if there 
is a heavy sea outside. 

Reaching out northward with these long arms 
Amherst clutches Grindstone Island, an almost 
circular land platform five miles or so across, with 
rocky shore cliffs all the way around on east and 
west. Grindstone is a very inviting and fertile 
island. Its shores are more brilliantly decked out 
in the blood red cliffs of its lower rock shelves than 
any other island of the group and between these 
verdure capped shelves lie here and there broad, 
hard and beautiful beaches. This large area of 
red sandstone contributes to the richness of the 
soil in the southern part of the island while the 
northern part, with higher lava cliffs and banks 
of colored gypsum clays is diversified with a surface 
of knolls and pitholes characteristic of the gypsum 
bearing rocks. The demoiselle domes are not as 
conspicuous here as elsewhere but the lava beds are 
accompanied by vast deposits of gypsum which 
near the west shore stand out in brilliantly shining 
silvery towers. Where the boat lands at Pointe-au- 
Meule on the east side, the gray sandstones rise 



224 THE HEART OF GASPE 

into a high, bare, wave-eaten bluff, and gathered 
about the wharf and the post-office is the English 
settlement with the prosperous fish establishment 
of William Leslie, one of the commercial monu- 
ments of the islands. Here are the headquarters 
and pretentious buildings of the new development 
companies and from this point south the road 
which circles the island leads over the fertile sand- 
stone plateau around to the southwest corner 
where lies the settlement of Etang-du-Nord. This 
is the French end of the island and all is activity 
in the fishing; indeed it is the chief center of the 
real concentrated fishing industry of all the islands, 
typical in all the equipment of the business and 
the entire devotion of its people to it. Its little 
bay between its red cliffs harbors a larger fishing 
fleet than one will find anywhere else in the group, 
and its odors are eminently and intensely Gas- 
pesian. There is a hotel at Etang-du-Nord, if 
you will; two indeed, one French, the other Eng- 
lish — but what if they are black with flies? Was 
there ever a fishing station without them? At 
the north of the island lies the historic settlement 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 225 

of Havre-aux-Maisons — House Harbor, where the 
outside water pours in between Grindstone and 
Alright from the east, entering the long south 
arm of the Great Lagoon stretching north from 
Grindstone for 26 miles, hemmed in by Alright on 
the east and the great sand bar on the west, — as 
far north as Grosse Isle where it opens out into the 
broad reach of inside waters that separates Grosse 
Isle and North East Cape from Grand Entry. 
It is a passage that may be sailed along a carefully 
staked but very sinuous channel where the tide 
often runs heavy and in a stiff breeze the chance 
of being blown out of the narrow course and 
aground on the shallows is ever present. The 
lagoon is a mile across where narrowest, 12 miles 
or more where widest behind Grand Entry; its 
shores, barricaded by interminable sand dunes, 
are the nesting places of innumerable waterfowl. 

From Grindstone Island north the islets grow 
smaller. Alright Island, the next north, is a little 
strip of beautiful demoiselles skirted with orange 
red cliffs, stretching four miles in coast line but 
not more than half this in width. The steamer 



226 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

stops at Pointe-Basse under the lee of a demoiselle, 
but there are only a few people to serve; the popu- 
lation is small, though the island has a church and 
conventual retreat at the south near House Harbor. 
The beautifully molded hills and the red cliffs 
soon run out at the north into endless sand which 
stretches away to form the eastern boundary of 
the great lagoon, as far as Grand Entry, the eastern 
passage through the sand into the harbor within. 
This is the safest resting place for saihng craft in 
all the islands and yet it is parlous enough to ne- 
gotiate in low water and a nor'east blow. I have 
waited on the sands of Grand Entry eight hours 
while the steamer was standing off outside watch- 
ing for a chance to take a reasonable risk at the 
channel. From here all the lands left at the north 
are mere beads of rock strung together on strands 
of sand; on the west Grosse Isle and its little valet, 
Red Island, lying inside the lagoon; North East 
Cape, East Island and Coffin Island. Champlain 
called this string of islets Les Ramees, the neck- 
lace, a name that stuck to all the islands on many 
of the early charts. They are all populated, and 




ALRIGHT ISLAND, WITH DEMOISELLE HILL, LOW RED SANDSTONE 
PLATEAU AND GRAY SANDSTONE CLIFFS 




GROSSE ISLE SAND BAR AND ROCK, FROM THE S(JLTnWi;s' 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 227 

quite entirely by English settlers, and they are 
picturesque indeed with their sparse acres of ver- 
dure and their blazing expanse of sand dunes. 
Grosse Isle is just a half a demoiselle with a fishing 
cove at its base; joined by a bridge over a branch 
of the lagoon with another knoll which looks 
across over another lagoon to the steep slope of 
North East Cape, another half demoiselle and the 
highest point on the northern islands, its green 
sides showing a few white cottages. 

Coffin Island was set aside by the proprietor as 
maintenance for the church and there is an Eng- 
lish church here as well as at Grosse Isle. Old 
Harry Head and Oyster Basin are parts of Coffin 
Island and their southern sands lead down to the 
harbor of Grand Entry. 

The Magdalen cluster offers to the traveler or 
student experience in wealth of variety. There is 
an especial charm in the richness of color of their 
low-lying shores. The greens are not the darker 
hues of the spruce forests, but the emerald of grass 
capped hills and plains. Under the green lie here 
and there the almost crimson platforms of the soft 



228 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

sandstones into whose fronts the waves have 
everywhere eaten guUies and caves, obehsks and 
towers standing feeble guard over the extremities 
of their Httle capes. The cHffs of gypsiferous 
clays rise to greater heights and there are places 
where they command the eye by their extraor- 
dinary play of pink, gray and dull green bands. 
The bolder points of gray sandstone and dark lavas 
seem to stand as warders of the island masses 
and to plead, as it were, for their salvation from 
the relentless sea. The Gulf is azure in the sun- 
light on the rare summer days when her waters 
are at peace, but the tawny sand heaps rolling 
along the skyline, knoll on knoll, add a tinge of 
melancholy, speaking of destruction past and 
destruction to come, of time-long struggle, sur- 
render and of partial restitution. 

It is quite in keeping with the history of the 
Magdalens that there should be such a minor chord 
in their harmony. The islands and their sands 
have wrought terrific ruin to skippers and their 
craft from the time the Europeans began to throng 
the Gulf. The long low dark coast and treacher- 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 229 

Oils bars have lain like a trap for the unwary 
navigator, and when beating out of his course for 
the channels at the north or the south, or in times 
of stress when nor'east or nor'west gales were 
driving against rocks and sands, hundreds of craft 
have been broken on these unlighted shores, hun- 
dreds of lives have been lost and the bleaching 
ribs of dead ships are always to be seen on the 
coasts. There are castaways on all the islands, 
and tales of shipwreck make the history of yes- 
terday and the news of to-day. Mr. Brassette, the 
venerable postmaster at Havre Aubert, has told 
me that within his life on the island there have 
been, he thinks, not less than five hundred ships 
great and small cast away. The season of my 
first visit I learned of but one wreck in the summer 
weeks before my arrival. At the time of my second 
visit, in July of another year, there had already 
been three during the season with some loss of 
life. 

The atmosphere is full of the tragedy of the sea 
and while by far the greater number of the wrecked 
craft have met their fate on the northern sands. 



230 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

yet the southern islands have had their full share. 
One still hears the tale of the wreck of the Glou- 
cester fishing fleet in the ''Lord's Day Gale" 
one summer day of 1873 when by sudden shift of 
the wind from west to nor'east forty and more 
vessels were driven ashore in Pleasant Bay. The 
Miracle, an emigrant ship from Ireland with above 
400 passengers, went ashore in 1847 at East Cape 
with terrific loss of hfe. And so the stories go. 
On my sideboard is a crest-marked silver tray, 
tossed up on the shores of Entry from the wreck 
of the good ship Cameo in 1861, and alongside my 
desk, a mahogany cabin chair washed ashore in 
Grosse Isle in 1884, from the Norwegian bark 
Athene when the captain, Jorgen Lorentzen and 
18 of his crew were lost. The mournful tales are 
without end and not only do the burying grounds 
with their rows of nameless graves, as on Mt. 
Gridley, and in the Protestant churchyard at 
Grindstone, tell these sad stories, but the contents 
of the islanders' cottages bear witness of the 
wreckage. It is at the north along the treacherous 
sands of East Cape and Grosse Isle where the 



THE MAGD.\LEN ISLANDS 231 

danger lies nearest and the worst of the disasters 
have happened. 

And it is not with feelings of unmixed sorrow 
that the kind-hearted settlers of the north see a 
vessel laboring in distress in the ofiing. The story- 
told of many a rough coast is told too of these 
islands — of the little girl who nightly prayed that 
she might be a good little girl and "Please, God, 
send another wreck before morning." Why should 
it not be so? A provision ship went ashore on 
Grosse Isle some twenty years ago in early May. 
The islanders had had their hardest winter. Food 
had run very low and among the French all was 
gone, though the more provident English had 
saved a few potatoes. Those who had beasts 
killed them, but very few had them, and wild 
fowl were about all that was left for food. The 
poor begged from door to door for their sick 
families dying of starvation. The winter hung on 
and the ice showed no signs of breaking till May. 
May 19th came along the first vessel, by "good 
luck" a provision boat bound for some distant 
port. The ''hand of Providence " drove her ashore 



232 THE HEART OF GASP£ 

and the wants of the starving were met till the seal 
came down and the ice gave way to the fishing. 

There is no better story of strenuous experiences 
in these islands and no such lively picture of the 
life there sixty and more years ago as that told 
by the Rev'd Dr. George Jehoshaphat Mountain, 
Third Lord Bishop of Quebec — the first Protestant 
prelate to visit them. This intrepid man was 
sixty-one years old when he felt it in the line of his 
duty to go to the Magdalens and look after the 
Protestant communities on Grosse Isle and Entry 
whose existence had been reported to him. So 
in 1850 ''he determined to see those few sheep in 
the wilderness with his own eyes" and took pas- 
sage in a small brigantine bound for Halifax and 
whose captain undertook to put him off, on the 
islands. As it chanced, the skipper approached 
the islands in the night and knowing nothing of 
their coasts was about to lay to, but as a fishing 
schooner lay near by, the Bishop had himself and 
his baggage transferred to this vessel, 

''an unpainted, roughly finished craft of thirty 
tons, abundantly redolent of cod and manned by six 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 233 

Acadian fishermen, as unkempt and dirty a set of 
beings as could well be pictured to the fancy. 
The wind was damp and chilly, but not relishing 
the idea of what was considered to be the cabin, 
I wrapped mine auld cloak about me and sitting 
down on the little hatchway remained conversing 
with the man at the helm. I could not help think- 
ing, as he sat bestriding the tiller, with gleams of 
light thrown partially upon his figure from the 
mouth of the hatchway (there being a small fire 
and a miserable greasy, blackened lamp burning 
below), especially when Placide, a young lad be- 
longing to the crew, brought him, at his com- 
mand, a coal in the tongs to rekindle his pipe, 
which helped to discover his beard of about a 
week's growth; — I could not help thinking what a 
subject I had before me for the pencil. I felt 
myself, altogether, in rather a strange situation. 
I had come upon this occasion without a single 
companion or attendant, and here I was, now a 
grey-headed Bishop of the Church of England, 
having tumbled, as it were, into this rude little 
fishing vessel which crossed my way by chance, 
driving alone, in a dark night, upon the waters of 
the Gulf and seeking to effect a landing, where I 
knew not, but anywhere upon the islands, which 
I had never visited before, upon which I did not 
know a living soul, and after setting my foot upon 
which I should be at a loss how to proceed or 
what direction to take, in order to find the persons 



234 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

who could put things in train for me to accomphsh' 
the objects of my visit. . . . When it approached 
eleven o'clock, I went below and saw, to my sur- 
prise, a rude stone chimney built into the vessel 
and a fire of fagots upon the hearth, which I was 
glad to approach. I sat before it upon a chest 
occupying the little central space between a couple 
of berths looking most utterly repulsive. I sat up 
the whole night over the fire which I took care to 
keep in activity." 

At half past four they ran inshore off Sou 'west 
Point on Amherst Island, in a downpour of rain 
and nothing in sight but a black pig and two fish 
houses on a beach strewed with cod heads. Stow- 
ing the Bishop's baggage under an overturned 
flat, the sailors started off to find a horse and some 
sort of conveyance, for where they had come ashore 
was twelve miles from Amherst village and six- 
teen miles from Grindstone which he wished to 
reach. We can imagine the distinguished and 
devoted man on the sands of Sou'west Point as 

"I took my post under my umbrella against one 
of the boats but presently espying a little cavity 
which would just fit me, sitting, in a low browed 
cliff of red sandstone, I proceeded to occupy it, 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 235 

coming out in the intervals between the showers. 
In an hour and a half the men returned bringing 
with them two or three people and a low cart of 
the rudest possible construction, drawn by a 
wretched looking little rat of a horse,* whose 
harness, home made, was formed of strips of seal 
skin with the fur left upon it, the saddle however 
being worked into a sort of parchment and sup- 
ported by a parcel of rags. The headstall was a 
piece of old rope and the reins were of the same 

* The Bishop thus had a chance, which no longer exists, to 
ride behind a Magdalen island 'pony. This breed of tough 
little beast is now practically extinct, there being to-day but 
one known to me and that is at Etang-du-Nord. The history 
of this horselet and how it got to the islands is not known now 
to any of the islanders, and, so far as I can find, is not a matter 
of record; at all events fifty years ago this "rat of a horse" 
was the only kind on the island and at that time had not been 
crossed with outside stock. There is pony blood still in many 
of the Acadian horses of the islands. There are good reasons 
for stating that the ponies were brought over from Sable 
Island, whose herd of horses dates back to an uncertain ship- 
wreck of a French or Spanish vessel in the 16- or 1700's, 
from which a cargo of horses swam ashore and have ever 
since multiplied and flourished, now under government con- 
trol. The Magdalen pony was in many ways unlike the 
Sable Island ponies one sees to-day in the Halifax markets 
where the government auctions off the increase of the herd 
every four years, but it would not be safe to say that such 
differences as now exist between them are not too great to 
have been developed in the course of a century, under the 
different physical conditions in Sable- Island and the Mag- 
dalens. 



236 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

material. Such a cart, it may be understood, had 
no springs, but there was a board across the mid- 
dle of it for a seat. My baggage however quite 
filled it up. The cart was driven by a French 
lad." 

And so the Bishop walked over the sands of 
Amherst Island in the early morning, umbrella 
spread against the pouring rain, without a house 
in sight, nine miles to the tidal gully, which sepa- 
rated him from Etang-du-Nord, and then at last 
to a house where he could dry his clothes and get 
a breakfast, ''of which, having walked about nine 
miles after being up in the schooner all night, I 
was thankful to partake." And the bishop adds 
"with all gratitude" that he would have been 
much more exhausted by these exertions forty 
years before than he was then. 

The bishop carried out his strenuous plans, 
reached House Harbor, there procured a boat 
which took him through the channel to his sheep 
in the wilderness of Grosse Isle of which he found 
about fifty, most of whom had never seen a Prot- 
estant minister or heard a religious service. The 
settlement, he says, "in this rude, sequestered. 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 237 

isolated corner," was twenty-two years old, that 
is, was begun in 1828, and the bishop was deeply 
impressed by the extreme poverty of the people.* 

The visit to Grosse Isle was followed by one to 
Entry Island, attended by lively experiences. 
Over on Entry ''there was a little question about 
lights," for his evening service. A canvass of the 
island, however, produced three candles; ''one 
was set in a candlestick, one forced into a lamp 
and one stuck in the neck of a bottle." The people 
heard him gladly and on his departure showed 
evidence of their better condition in life by load- 
ing the vessel bountifully with the products of 
their island. 

Distant as these islands are and must always 

be from the whirl of human interests, they have 

* I can imagine the reverend gentleman's experiences at 
Grosse Isle. Once, in passing a night tliere, I was routed out 
of bed by aborigines who evidently beheved me an intruder. 
I bear such bed fellows no ill will for I know their distinguished 
pedigree and that their ancestors found homes in the Silurian 
beds before the human race was conceived. But as I had 
other nights to stay I demurred to the partnership. My host 
expressed regret without surprise, but casually remarked 
that the last person who had slept in the bed was the Rev. 
J — P — , the English minister. 



238 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

had their share in the earUer events on the coast. 
Indeed Cartier visited them before he ever saw 
and laid claim to New France and so their recorded 
history runs back a little further than that of the 
greater country of which they now form such a 
slender appanage. In his first voyage of 1534 his 
course into the Golfo Quadrato lay south from the 
Straits of Belle Isle and he made land falls in suc- 
cession from the north; first the Bird Rocks which 
he named the Isles aux Margaulx, then Brion 
Island, which has carried from his day the name 
of the first admiral of France, Philipe Chabot, 
Sieur de Brion. Here he went ashore and of the 
Island he wrote such a glorious description as to 
make the reader feel he had found the Garden of 
Eden. Some of the later voyagers applied this 
name, Brion, to the entire group of islands, but 
Cartier, passing this way the next year, speaks of 
crossing over from Brion Island, which he re- 
visited, to Les Araynes — the sands of Grosse Isle 
and East Point. By this name and its variants 
the group was set down on many of the early 
charts. The maps of the Gulf which date from 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 239 

soon after Cartier's time are not altogether reliable 
records of position but are of interest as showing 
the growth of observations concerning the form of 
the islands and their changes in name, the years 
of confusion with the Isle St .-Jean (Prince Edward 
Island) and their gradual distinction from it. In- 
deed few, if any, of the charts to Champlain's time 
and later made out the Isle St .-Jean, fifty miles 
to the west of the Magdalens. 

We do not know how soon after Cartier's dis- 
covery the men of Normandy and Breton got in 
among these islands, but by the latter part of the 
16th century the stories they brought home of 
the tremendous number of seals and walruses to 
be had, reached England and started English ex- 
peditions into this quarter. There was a voyage 
in 1591 by a skipper unknown, on behalf of M. de- 
la-Court, Pre-Ravillon and Grand-Pr^, for the 
purpose of killing "Morses" for "trayne oyl," 
which of itself indicates previous attempts by the 
French for the same purpose. Then of the English, 
George Drake made a passage in 1593, finding the 
harbors already occupied by "Britons of S. Malo 



240 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

and Basques of S. John de Luz." Drake found 
that "by coming a day after the Fayre" his efforts 
were naught; just as Charles Leigh and Sylvester 
Wyet, who with Drake were the first Englishmen 
to sail so far within the Gulf, are said on their 
arrival, to have been confronted by two hundred 
French, who had planted three pieces of ordnance 
on the beach, and three hundred savages — an 
opposition which led to a sharp sea fight and seems 
to have effectually dissuaded further attempts on 
the part of the English to fasten their hold on 
this business. 

These islands were granted in 1653 by the Com- 
pany of New France to Nicolas Denys as a part 
of the vast region stretching from Cape Canso at 
the south to Cap-des-Rosiers at the north, and 
the next year Denys received from the king letters 
patent as governor and lieutenant-general to all 
this great territory. 

In those early days land patents in the world 
of New France were given easily and conflicting 
claims to the same territory issued from the same 
source often resulted. So it happened that in 1663 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 241 

the Company of New France commissioned Fran- 
cois Doublet of Honfleur to establish a colony on 
the ''illes de Brion" for the cod and seal fishing. 
Doublet was also given permission to change the 
name of the island from Brion to Madeleine* 
which was the name of his wife. So this name 
has come down to the present as a memorial of 
conjugal devotion, though Doublet's attempts at 
a settlement failed totally and have been almost 
forgotten. 

* Professor Ganong assures me that the name Madelene is 
attached to these islands on Champlain's map of 1632, which 
is not now accessible to me. This is a rather singular coinci- 
dence in view of the statement made above. Probably the 
whole history of Doublet's attempts at settlement would 
have passed with little notice if it were not for a short sharp 
passage in Denys's Description Geographique et Historique des 
Costes de VAmerique Septentrionale, 1672, and had not the 
departmental archives at Rouen afforded ia recent years the 
manuscript journal of Doublet's son, which was edited and 
printed in 1883 by Br^ard, under the title Journal du Corsaire 
Jean Doublet de Honfleur. This is a remarkable story of a 
freebooter's life in every quarter of the watery globe, be- 
ginning with his successful attempt, at the age of seven, to 
stow himself away aboard his father's ship which came out 
to the Madeleines in 1663; the experience of the attempted 
colony there; the return next year to find the colony de- 
moralized, the place abandoned and the venture wholly lost. 
The younger Doublet declares the islands were named for 
his mother, by consent of the proprietors. 



242 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

Like Doublet, Denys failed in his efforts to in- 
duce colonization and in 1720 the Magdalens, 
with S. Jean and Miscou, were ceded by letters 
patent to the Count de St.-Pierre, Equerry to the 
Duchess of Orleans. He was commissioned not 
only to carry on the fisheries but to cultivate the 
soil and cut the timber. So far as we know, the 
attempted colonization under this patent effected 
little and the islands were lost sight of till after 
the fall of New France, when the English govern- 
ment annexed the islands to Newfoundland. By 
the Quebec Act they were soon after attached to 
that province where they now belong. 

A new era in their history, however, began in 
1798 when they were granted by royal patent 
to Sir (afterwards Admiral) Isaac Coffin. Cap- 
tain Coffin, the bright particular star of the prolix 
New England Coffins, of which the Boston branch 
were all Loyalists, had fought well in His Maj- 
esty's navy during the American war, and in 
1788 while transporting to Quebec, his chief and 
friend. Lord Dorchester, then for the second time 
governor-general, passed the Madeleines on their 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 243 

course and in jocular mood and haphazard way 
suggested that he would like to be made proprietor 
of these islands. The governor-general assented, 
but it was not till the time of his successor that 
the royal warrant was issued.* 

The new proprietor established at once a feudal 
system of land tenure which has remained close 
to the present day as a last flickering expression 
of medievalism in the Enghsh lands of the western 
world. Sir Isaac Coffin required the occupants of 
the islands to take titles in the nature of emphy- 
teutic leases or perpetual leases at an irredeem- 
able rent. The islands cover nearly 100,000 
acres and at the usual annual return of 20 cents 
an acre would have produced a considerable ground 
rent, but this land never was fully leased, the 
rents never proved collectible and the system 
resulted in continual contentions between agent 
and tenant which at times culminated in con- 
siderable migrations from the islands. A very in- 



* Admiral Coffin's first naval service on these northern 
waters was in the frigate Gaspee; his next, in the Sybil: ad- 
mirable omens for his later proprietorship. 



244 THE HEART OF GASPE 

teresting account of the land tenure on the islands 
forty years ago was given by Faucher de Saint- 
Maurice in his Promenades dans le Golfe de Saint- 
Laurent (1874), though it is no longer pertinent to 
existing conditions and must be regarded as tinged 
with the author's sympathetic interest in the 
Acadians. 

In later years the attitude of the hereditary 
seigneur has been more lenient and the parliament 
of the province after long investigation of the 
situation has enacted a regulated form of tenure 
assuring outstanding tenants the right to become 
proprietors, and it has further alleviated the really 
deplorable condition in some of the islands by 
making repayment to the tenant of one-third the 
amount necessary to effect a freehold. 

Yet in spite of these possible reliefs, not a single 
dweller on Entry Island holds his land in fee — all 
pay the rental as in the ancient days. The greater 
ease of tenantry and the possibility of ownership 
has, with the tremendous resources of the island 
waters, helped to increase the population of the 
archipelago, now reaching 7,000 people, the great 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 245 

majority of whom are confined to the larger islands, 
Amherst and Grindstone. 

A few years ago the seigniorial rights of the 
Coffin heirs were acquired by the Magdalen Island 
Development Company subject to a controlhng 
restraint by the proprietor, and though the com- 
pany erected extensive fish houses and equipped 
the fishermen with gasoline boats, the efforts 
failed to increase the productiveness of the islands. 
Still more recently such surviving rights as this 
company possessed were assumed by the Eastern 
Canada Fisheries, Limited, which hopes to reap 
by modern methods the tremendous wealth of 
both sea and land. But it is just as well to say, in 
passing, that the "hustler" from Montreal or 
Boston, or whatever place, who thinks to make 
the Madeleine island fisherman adapt himself to 
new modes, to fish when he doesn't want to fish, 
to go out to the banks when the sun is under or a 
gale is brewing, or to do any great amount of labor 
when his credit at the store is good, is likely to 
suffer from misplaced confidence. Heredity is 
strong among these folk. They do not feel the 



246 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

compelling need for more money to help them 
keep pace with the outside world. In their nat- 
ural philosophy it is best to keep life simple — it 
always has been so. These are the Isles of Re- 
pose — nobody cares whether the venturers from 
outside pay dividends or not. 

To talk so much of these islands and to say so 
little of the wealth of their waters would be to 
pass by what has seemed to the simpler philosophy 
of islanders and visitors alike the reason for their 
existence. At any rate it is nature's compensation 
for those whom choice or fortune compels to live 
here. The life hereupon is not to be estimated in 
terms of the summer sea. Blue skies and southerly 
breezes are but for a day at a time. For nearly 
half the year the islanders are icebound with no 
communication with the outside world, save by 
cable and now in these last days by wireless from 
the hilltop on Grindstone. The turbulence of the 
autumn begins as early as September in these 
uneasy waters and with the breaking of the ice 
fields in March and April begins the turbulence 
of the spring. Full half the year is given over to 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 247 

change of seasons, to gales and fogs. Of the other 
half two months are summer, though seed time 
and harvest stretch the season. Yet if nature 
seems to have been stingy in her other gifts to the 
islands, she stinted nothing when it came to fish. 
The broad rock platforms which surround the 
islands at slender depths are the natural gather- 
ing places of the fish and in spite of the millions 
taken out, more millions remain. With the dis- 
appearance of the ice comes the spring run of cod. 
The herring still abound in limitless shoals, the 
mackerel have never yet deserted the islands as 
they have the Gaspe Coast and with the coming 
down of the fall the cod return fat and fine for the 
late fishing. On most of Gaspe only the cod re- 
mains, the herring are too few for anything but 
bait and the mackerel migrated long years ago, 
only just now coming back here and there to their 
historic grounds. The islanders have only to 
reach out and take — but reaching out to take 
means the roughest and most hazardous work so 
it is little wonder that the fisherman prefers to 
venture just so far into this struggle as the neces- 



248 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

sities of life require and no further. But this is 
not all the wealth of the water that comes his 
way. The lobster harvest is tremendous and a 
million lobsters a year, even at 3 to 4 cents a lob- 
ster, mean a lot of money to the islandman, to 
whom, because he is a "poor islander," the Fish- 
eries Commission allows an extra month of fishing 
in the fall, which the other lobstermen of Gasp6 
do not get. 

And then there are the seal which come with 
the moving of the northern ice. In the great 
attack upon the seal as it is carried on by ice- 
breaking steamers from Newfoundland, the Mag- 
dalener has no share. His part in this perilous 
business is done from the shore or from his light 
skin boats which do not get out of the island waters. 
With his facihties he does the best he can, and 
often very well, but the Newfoundland sealers will 
get in his way, breaking into his ice and his pros- 
pective herds. The season is short and quick — a 
few days and it is over and the harvest of hooded 
seal is sometimes 15,000, sometimes, though rarely, 
75,000. Here and there on the islands are the 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 249 

square oil vats for trying down the blubber and 
these are about all the traces of the business the 
visitor of summer days can see. The little harbor 
seal which dot the sandbanks and lagoons on 
summer days play no part in this battle. So with 
seal and lobster, cod, herring, mackerel, lobster 
and cod again, from spring to winter, the Mag- 
dalener is really in a marine garden though he 
may choose to pluck but little. There was once 
a larger game in abundance here, but its day is 
long past — the walrus. It was for its rich stores 
of oil, ivory and leather that the early expeditions 
to the island were made. Stories are left of the 
hunt for this big mammal here, and most of them 
are of doubtful veracity, for I have seen it recorded 
that the last walrus killed on the islands was in 
the 1780's, while Professor Packard says that the 
last killed in the Gulf was on the Labrador in 
1841. The records of this old hunt remain be- 
neath the soil of the islands; on the low shores of 
Grindstone and all along the western shore of 
Entry where the waves have cut into the land of 
a century ago, there are layers of bones, tusks 



250 THE HEART OF GASPE 

and teeth. I have even dug out a great leaden 
slug from the skull of one of these creatures. 
There's a Sea-cow point on Coffin Island, another 
on the south shore of Amherst, both of which 
record these activities of the past. And indeed 
the bone heaps distributed over rock surfaces and 
beneath 6-10 inches of soil are indications of a 
slaughter which helps one to understand how the 
walrus has become extinct in these waters. 

There are a few other little dots of rock about 
this island group. Wolf Island lies buried in the 
long western bar; Shag, a bare platform, is off the 
sands of Alright, and Gull is near Etang-du-nord. 
Deadman's Island — Alezay, it was called by Car- 
tier — is a sarcophagus ten miles southwest of 
Amherst. Of it, Thomas Moore, on his way home 
from Canada, sang dolorously a fanciful song of 
shipwreck, though he misplaced the island by 
putting it off the coast of Newfoundland. What 
tales of sea and seamen these ragged little rocks 
enshrine, no one can ever know, nor tell of the 
bones of skipper and craft buried on the shoals 
of the "^^Tiite Horse, the Pierre-du-Gros-Cap, on 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 251 

the west, the Columbines and the Pearl reef on 
the east. 

Ten miles off to the north of Grosse Isle, with a 
ten fathom channel between is Brion Island, seven 
miles long, but stretched out thin, with 200 foot 
cliffs on the west and all a platform of horizontal 
gray sandstones, grass-topped and inviting. This 
is the island that its discoverer, Cartier, went into 
ecstasies over on that June day of 1534, when he 
anchored and went ashore; and when he expressed 
his enthusiasm by giving the spot the name of his 
patron. English charts, with dull insistence, as- 
sume that Cartier was mistaken in its name and 
so they call it Byron. The attractions that Car- 
tier found here on that long ago summer day are 
not so many now. Its timber is gone, the ''morses" 
which lined its shore departed a century ago, its 
grapes, its gooseberries are hard to find and its 
roses are blasted, but its verdure and fertility 
remain, its sheep produce a wool of extraordinary 
worth and a mutton of purest flavor. Brion has 
for two generations been the property of the Ding- 
wall family and its new inhabitants are for the 



252 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

most part in some relation of dependence upon 
the descendants. Doubtless, the island has its 
fascinations to one who will search them out. I 
have sailed about it and gazed upon it wistfully, 
but have not yet been ashore. 

The Bird Rocks, lying out beyond Brion, to the 
northeast some ten miles, have another sort of 
story — one of birds and of human tragedy. "Set 
by God the Lord in the midst of the waters," said 
Father Juvenaeus, in the 1600's, they seemed to 
him like a great dovecote, so covered were they 
with birds from top to bottom. And since his day 
and that earlier year when Cartier called them the 
Isles-aux-margaulx, this great colony of water 
fowl has been the wonder of navigators, in later 
years the theme of much writing by the bird men. 
But of the human tragedies on these remote bits 
of bare rocks, httle has been recorded. The Bird 
Rocks are three in number now. In the early days, 
the two little fragments now known as the Little 
Birds, were evidently one, but the sea has broken 
them apart. The Great or Northern Bird is a 
flat rock table, not as large as some ice floes. 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 253 

made up of the same horizontal gray sandstones 
that compose Brion and much of the Magdalen 
group, and these have sheer vertical walls on all 
sides, rising to a height of 150 feet at the base 
of the lighthouse. Its grassy top covers near 
seven acres of ground. Here on the horizontal 
ledges of its sheer cliffs roosts what is commonly 
regarded the largest bird colony on the Atlantic 
Coast. The discrepancies in the accounts of the 
number of the birds given by the early writers 
and the census that the bird students of to-day 
have taken of the population is so great as to con- 
vince us that the settlement has been well-nigh 
decimated. Here are the gannets, most beauti- 
ful of all water fowl, in greatest profusion, murres 
and kittiwakes, razor bill auks, puffins and guil- 
lemots, — only a short Hst of species, but an as- 
sociation of most ancient date. And in the old 
days, there was the great auk, awkward gare- 
fowl, long ago beaten to death and extinction by 
the clubs of the sailors. There is one and only 
one evident cause for the rapid decrease in the 
number in this bird colony in these later years 



254 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

and that is the inroads made by the fishermen 
and ''eggers" upon the egg supply — the potential 
feature of the settlement. In the days when the 
Gloucester fishing fleet had free access to these 
waters, the Bird Rock was their resort when pro- 
visions ran low, and the "egger" who now as- 
saults the Newfoundland-Labrador colonies in un- 
restrained Hcense was not checked in his attacks on 
this island until it was made a bird reserve by the 
government and put under the care of the light- 
keeper. And now it is the bird "lover," the egg 
collector with commercial proclivities who is carry- 
ing the work along. I have encountered one of 
these ''lovers" who had in his possession 367 
clutches of eggs of each of the seven known species 
of birds. This avid murderer had, in one visit, 
thus put an end to not less than 2,000 members of 
this community, an offense for which in his own 
State, he would have been well fined or imprisoned. 
But let no one visit on the head of the lonely light- 
keeper reproach for such performances. His soli- 
tude, his delight in a visitor from the big world 
outside are their own justifications for winking 




THE LEDGES OF THE ILE-AUX-MAlUiO 




THE GREAT BIRD ROCK, WITH BUILDINGS OF THE LIGHT 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 255 

at such performances. The real romance of bird 
Hfe on this rock has been depicted in extraordinary 
portraiture by the marvelous photographs taken 
by Mr. Herbert *K. Job from periculous points 
of view on the narrow ledges where a foothold is 
only tenable when one is tied to security by a rope 
from above. The decrease in the number of the 
bird population here is a cause of some just sohci- 
tude to the conservation of our native fauna, but 
the remedy is, as we have indicated, not far to 
seek. The gannet is not to be found elsewhere in 
the Gulf, except at Bonaventure Island near Perc^, 
and at Perroquet Island off Anticosti, and there 
is little doubt that, of these settlements, the one 
at Bonaventure is the largest. 

It was not until 1870 that any light was placed 
on the Bird Rock. Up to that time, being square 
in the path of navigation through the southern 
passage, these rocks were a fearful menace to 
skippers and craft. For many years after the 
erection of the light, the only means of ascending 
the rock face was in a crate hauled up the cliff 
by a windlass and a jib. Some of the early light- 



256 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

keepers dug out a rough stairway on the cliff face 
and up these, one and the other, all supplies and all 
construction material were taken. Ten years ago 
the government made a more reliable stairway in 
the rocks with an iron hand rail. It is a precarious 
passage enough, amid crumbling rock and scream- 
ing birds, and even so, the hoist must still serve 
for heavier loads. 

I doubt if the world holds a more isolated light 
station. Here, during the unfrozen months, the 
lightkeeper and his little family, usually his wife, 
a few children and his assistant, have only their 
dull routine of duties. Once or twice perhaps, 
in the year, the light inspection steamer with 
supplies, then the occasional bird student or fisher- 
man. The shipping which the lighthouse serves 
passes the rock on one side and another and the 
news of the day is only the passing of another 
vessel. Perhaps the casual visitor brings in a 
newspaper or a little talk of the world outside, 
but for the rest, the eternal sea, the sempiternal 
screams of the birds, the monotonous round of 
daily work at the light, the fog horn, the boat- 




GAXXETS NESTING UN THE BIRD ROCK 
(Permission of Herbert K. JobJ 







JRUNNICH MURRES AND KITTIWAKES ON THE BIRD ROCK LEDGES 



THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS 257 

house. Frozen in for nearly half the year with 
only an endless waste of ice to look out upon, 
housed for days by gales and storms, till every 
word on every book and paper has been burned 
into the brain and every thought thought over a 
score of times, is it any wonder that more than 
once, the keeper, mad with his awful solitude, has 
been taken from the island in a straight] acket? 
Once there was a cable stretched from here by 
way of the Magdalens on to Cape Breton but now 
that is broken and abandoned, a set of Inter- 
national Code flags being the only means the 
keeper has to make known his distress to his neigh- 
bors, if perchance any should be passing, or the 
lightkeeper at Brion should see them. Some 
years ago at the down coming of the seal, the 
keeper and his assistant were floated off on sepa- 
rated ice cakes — the keeper to his death, the as- 
sistant to be washed ashore frozen and famished 
on the distant sands of Cape Breton. In 1912, the 
tragedy repeated itself and again the keeper was 
lost in the seal hunt, leaving the anguished wife 
to tend the light and to signal for succor with the 



258 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

International Code flags a kind-hearted ministry 
had placed at their disposal. But so heavy hung 
the fog banks day upon day that the signals were 
unavailing and so the stout-hearted widow with 
babe at breast, steered her shallop through the 
ice fields to her nearest neighbor on Brion Island. 
They will tell you on the Magdalens of the time 
the bomb exploded prematurely, blowing the 
keeper to fragments and fearfully maiming the 
assistant, who still lives upon the islands. 

And yet, with all its atmosphere of soUtude and 
tragedy, the Bird Rock is a charming spot for a 
brief stay. Its isolation is sublime, its attractions 
novel, its mode incomparable, if only one stay 
through at least one storm and then do not out- 
stay his welcome. 



THE PLACE NAMES 

The names scattered over a country illuminate 
an intimate side of its history which often escapes 
any other record. They aline themselves into the 
epochs of occupation, express sometimes old home 
ties, mark the merits of those who helped make 
history, bear witness to the settlers and best of 
all besprinkle the land with the associations, 
descriptive terms and whimsical conceptions of its 
first people. Everywhere through the States the 
poverty of the English imagination has smeared 
the map with humdrum and commonplace loans 
of names from the home country or even of the 
young States from the older. The only salvation 
in American names lies in the large survival from 
the Indian, the Dutch, the Spanish and the French. 
The English name is palpable. Its absolute 
frankness leaves nothing to imagination, though 
usually much to euphony. It seldom has a value 
beyond its association with the home town from 

259 



260 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

which it was taken. But it will always have one 
merit— it was not stolen from a classical diction- 
ary or a map of continental Europe or South 
America, like the multitude of designations which 
disfigure the surface of New York. 

Gasp4, like all Quebec, is well loved of saints 
and angels for it bears its full share of them. Saint- 
George has a cove on the Forillon, one of the very 
earliest of the EngHsh settlements, and a canton 
across Gaspe Bay, at Saint-Peter. Indeed Saint- 
Peter is in the canton of Saint-George. There are 
Saint-Joseph and Saint-Martin, Saint-John and 
Saint- Adelaide. But the first of all these holy 
names to consecrate Gaspe was that of Notre Dame, 
given by Champlain to the mountains of the north 
shore, more commonly known now by the Micmac 
term Shickshocks — the rocky mountains. There 
are latter day saints, too, represented by such ven- 
erable names as Baillargeon, Bishop of Quebec, 
Marjorique, a cure of Douglastown, Blanchet, sl 
priest of the lower provinces and afterwards Arch- 
bishop of Oregon, Magdeleine, an abbe who gave 
land for an Indian mission on the north shore. 



PLACE NAMES 261 

Very appropriate is De Noue, one of the earliest of 
the Jesuits in New France. 

With less merit to Gaspesian recognition are 
some of the personal names. These are township 
names and we may assume that they occurred to 
the official surveyors who first divided the coun- 
try into townships, as altogether worthy of recog- 
nition regardless of geography. In the shortage 
of really commemorative names, as has often hap- 
pened in the work of a land office, there is the cus- 
tomary run on the politicians of the day for the 
perfunctory christening of exceedingly perfunc- 
tory divisions of land. De Beaujeu and Duchesnay, 
great though their merits, had no especial claim 
on this peninsula; the town of Fox carries a dis- 
tinguished cognomen which seems to have no rela- 
tion to the river (Renard) which it includes; Fortin 
has a better right as member for this county and 
Gait is appropriate anywhere in Canada. Syden- 
ham commemorates a governor-general; Laforce a 
soldier of 1812. 

Few of such names illuminate much of the his- 
tory of the country; but there are others, both less 



262 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

and greater, that shine with a clearer Hght; from 
Louis, the Grande Monarqiie, patron of Mont 
Louis, to Douglas, the Scotch surveyor who laid 
out the many streeted Douglastown for the United 
Empire Loyalists; O'Hara, patentee of Gaspe 
Basin, and Governor-General Haldimand; Arcouil, 
a Jersey fisherman, and the author Rameau; the 
fighting member from the county, Christie, and 
Arnold, the early Anglican missionary at Gaspe 
Basin; Alban Bond, a first settler to whose honor 
stands Mount Alban, the highest point on the 
coast, and Rose, an old family, guiltless of any 
association with Cap-des-Rosiers. 

Albany is a name that came in with the maps of 
Sir William Alexander's time and was apphed to 
the Shickshock mountains, while the same Scot 
loyally rejected Cartier's Baie-des-Chaleurs for 
Stirling Bay. There's a touch of old France in 
the name Chlorydorme, a strangely Attic word of 
many spellings, which the grantee of the seigniory 
brought from the home town of Cloridon. The 
Parisian visitor Bonfils, who spent a summer 
at Perce, was lucky to have the broad cove of 



PLACE NAMES 263 

U Anse-au-beaufils (anglice, Lancy Buffy) named 
for him. The cUffs of Bon Ami, which lower over 
the St. Lawrence across from Grande Greve, might 
imply a friendly retreat for the fishermen in stress 
of weather, but the name is really that of a Jersey- 
man who long ago set his lobster pots there. People 
still debate whether U Anse-au-Brillant refers 
to a long forgotten settler or is, as Colonel Wood 
has said, a cove where the rising sun strikes in 
with marvelous brilliancy. U Anse-aux-Cousins 
(Aunts and Cousins) is purely a family matter. 
The Coffin families came early into Gaspe Basin 
with the first Loyalists, were blest and multiplied. 
In this cove all the settlers were of this clan and 
so in the course of the generations, all became 
cousins. 

It goes without comment that the oldest and 
the most picturesque of Gaspe names are those of 
early French origin which are descriptive of nat- 
ural effects, or natural associations. The former 
have given a chance to the imagination and they 
are legitimately perpetuated on from the very few 
Micmac names left in Gaspe, but which own to a 



264 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

like origin. Cap-Blanc, Cap-Rouge, Cap-Barre, 
Pointe Jaune all are projecting points of the parti- 
colored rocks which beautify the coast. 

Chien-Blanc, a low-lying cliff of white sandstone, 
with the outline of a crouching dog, is less com- 
monplace. Mont-Joli is simple and pretty, but 
Cap-Chat is a bone of contention. Captain Demers, 
master pilot and skipper of the Campana, ship 
of pleasant memories but now buried in the Quebec 
channel, used to say when the tourist would ex- 
claim at the slender resemblance in the cliff face, 
"A cat? what kind of a cat?" "Well, you may 
spell it chat or chatte, as suits you best." It is 
spelled both ways on the charts. Many of the 
older writers have believed that Cap-Chat was 
named for de Chaste or de-la-Chate, Champlain's 
Dieppe patron. Roy, as well as others less depend- 
able, have thought this, but Rouillard believes the 
founder of New France would hardly have turned 
the graceless compliment of tacking so large a 
name to so small a headland. In fact the name 
is very ancient and the old charts are not at all 
uncertain on the meaning of the word. Francis 



PLACE NAMES 265 

de Creux in his map of 1660, has it Promontorium 
felis and Jeffrey's map of 1760 says flatly Cape 
Cat. Forillon is a very ancient and picturesque 
name which was originally applied to the little 
finger-like peninsula between the St. Lawrence and 
Gaspe Bay. It is long out of use and I have tried 
hard to reinstate it as it is needed for an altogether 
unique geographic and geologic figure. It is to 
be hoped that it may come again into its own. 
Forillon seems to refer to the long drill-shape 
of this finger of mountain ridge — as it were from 
forer, to drill. 

Perc6 was originally the lie Percee, the Insula 
perforata on De Creux's map. Applied at first 
only to the Pierced Rock, the name soon became 
transferred to the land alongside — and there are 
still a few among the older residents of that parish 
who have respect to the ancient form and spell it 
PercSe. 

Penouil is Peninsula. The word is almost lost 
to-day except among a few Canadians on the Foril- 
lon who occasionally speak of the ferry at the 
Penouil. It is a Basque word, and once Gaspe 



266 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

Bay was the Baie-du-Penouil. In the Rivicre- 
Ferree the fisherman found the water full of iron 
rust; in Tourelle he saw the rock pillars on the 
coast. As the Greeks ideahzed a dripping lime- 
stone cliff with its stalagmites, into Niobe weeping 
for her children slain at her feet, so the Canadian 
found in the multitude of little streams pouring 
down its sloping beaches a weeping cove — Anse- 
Pleureuse. The undulated fiat summit of Mt.-Ste. 
Anne at Perce, was, to early settlers, Table-d- 
rolante. 

Grande Greve is but a little fishing beach, but it 
is the largest that the Guernseymen found on the 
shores of the Forillon. Out at the end of Ship- 
head (itself a wonderfully effective descriptive 
name) lie the remains of La Vieille, a rock tower 
detached from the cliff. The ''old man" and the 
"old woman" seem to be favorite terms among 
sailors for such fugitive rock piles beaten out from 
the headlands by the force of the waves. One finds 
them in the Magdalens and on the shores of Scot- 
land and the Orkneys, the "Old Man of Hoy" still 
being Great Britain's most striking rock column. 



PLACE NAMES 267 

Names of association were scattered wide by 
the Canadians. Champlain began it by baptizing 
Cap-des-Rosiers for its wild roses. The rivers Ail 
and Echalotte have carried the aroma of wild onion 
for centuries. It would be strange indeed if some 
stream among the pines should not be Epinette 
blanche; if some geographic features did not con- 
serve the crow {Cap-corbeau), the kingfisher (R. 
d-daude), the fox {R. aux-renards) , the fern {Anse- 
fughe), the martin {R. d-la-marte) , the bear (C d- 
Vours), and even the potato {R. palate). 

Some of the names are solely commemorative; 
Anse-Louise recalls the wreck of the frigate La 
Louise; similarly but less definitely Pointe d-la- 
f regale and Anse-naufrage. A sort of anticlimax 
is the name Mississippi given to a little stream 
back of Gaspe, doubtless by some whimsical ex- 
plorer. 

There are names which indicate the bestead 
sailors' hope or despair, like Bonaventure Island 
and Cape Despair. Over the latter name a little 
war has raged, but here is some new light upon it : 
Despair is commonly supposed to be the anglicized 



268 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

style of the French, C. d'Espoir, which is the usual 
form of the name on the French charts. Of course 
one inverts the meaning of the other. Occasion- 
ally one finds Desespoir on a French map. On 
the De Creux map of 1660 it is Promontoriuvi spei, 
which would seem to establish the fact that d'Es- 
poir was the accepted term very early, but I have 
found an Italian map by Gastaldi, dated 1546, 
in which the name is written C. despera and this 
certainly carries the term back to the time of 
Cartier who rounded this desperate headland in 
1534 in coming out of the Baie-des-Chaleurs. 

Names which have undergone corruptions, with 
changing population, are frequent everywhere in 
this continent of many tongues. The Englishman 
plays havoc with all names that sound strange 
to him. If they convey no idea to his percep- 
tion they are "stupid" and forthwith made over 
to suit his taste. In the Hudson Valley and its 
vicinity where the English followed the Dutch, 
the old Holland names have been shamefully and 
shapelessly mouthed. Gaspe has some of a like 
origin. Fame Point achieved its distinction be- 



PLACE NAMES 269 

cause some poor Frenchmen cast ashore here, 
suffered from hunger (faim). Griffon Cove was 
L'Anse au-gris-fond — it had a sandy bottom; but 
surely the Frenchmen had no right to pronounce 
the name as they did unless there was a griffon in 
it, and so in the griffon went. The httle island off 
the point of St. Peter has had its vicissitudes. It 
is a bit of perfectly fiat rock and so the early French 
called it Plateau. Comes Admiral Bayfield and 
spells it on his charts, Plato. Doubtless Plato was 
quite as appropriate to the Gaspe Aegean as Pom- 
pey, Cicero, Syracuse and Pharsalia were to the 
wheat fields of central New York. Bayfield's 
Plato has hung to most of the charts though once 
in a while a map translated the name into plain 
English, Flat Island. I have seen on an 18th cen- 
tury transcription of such a map, the name put 
down as Hat Island, the antique italic Fl of the 
original having looked like an H to the copyist. 

At Cap-aux-os, the waves piled up some whale 
bones; the Frenchmen saw them; thus the name. 
Bayfield, and after him. Sir William Logan, 
noted the spot and spelled it Cape Oiseau, as 



270 THE HEART OF GASPfi 

though the birds had something to do with it. 
Later came the modern mapmakers, the Century 
Atlas and Rand & McNally among them, spelhng 
it in strictly English phonetics, Cape Ozo. Evolu- 
tion is not yet through with the term, for the Eng- 
lish on the coast are letting it gradually slip into 
Cahoozo. 

One more of these transformations to show how 
even a Frenchman may forget his own origin: On 
the Dartmouth river is Point Navoo; it was once 
Pointe Navarre, doubtless commemorating to its 
settlers the home country and their sovereign 
King of Navarre and Beam. The children's chil- 
dren of these pioneers knew nothing of Navarre 
but they did know a turnip (navoo) and a turnip 
it is. 

"It's a sign that thej' would rather 
Have a turnip than their father." 

Enghsh deglutition of French place names is 
beautifully exhibited in the transmogrification of 
Petit Rocher into Little Russia and Mille Roches 
into Millrush, Gaspe names outside of Gaspe 
County. 



PLACE NAMES 271 

But all this uncertainty of names is perfectly 
characteristic of a country where the names of 
the people themselves have often long since ceased 
to indicate the tongue they speak. There are 
Smiths on the south shore who are dumb in Eng- 
lish and every traveler through the Eastern Town- 
ships has seen the strapping sandy haired Mac- 
phersons, Macdonalds, Warrens, descendants of 
Eraser's soldiers, who know no word of Scotch or 
English. After a little experience with these lost 
clans one can comprehend the story told me by a 
priest of Gaspesia. ''What is your name?" he 
asked a little girl who had just joined his parish 
school. "Jeanette Bourget," she replied. "And 
who is your father?" said the priest. "Alcide 
Bourget, he's Scotch," said the child. "Your 
mother, who was she? " asked the priest. "Mother 
is French," answered the girl, "her name was 
Mclntyre." That's a perfectly intelligible mix- 
ture. But the quiet jocular fondness of the habit- 
ant for a nickname sometimes produces singular 
results. Colonel Wood tells two happy yarns to 
show this; one of a British castaway whose only 



272 THE HEART OF GASPE 

French was the single phrase "je rCen sais rien/' 
and whose grandson is now a French druggist, 
M. Jean Sarrien; another such castaway was Wil- 
liam Hastie whose French descendants do busi- 
ness to-day under the name of Billhastie. His 
Frenchman who could turn the village of Inverness 
into Sainte-Ivrognesse, and commit the sin of 
Sainte-Elizabeth-de-Boundary-Line, on a frontier 
settlement need ask nothing of the Englishman 
who changed U Anse-au-gris-fond into Griffon 
Cove. 



GLOSSARY OF GASPE PLACE NAMES 

Adams Point, Gasp6 (same as Lourde Point). The Adams 
family were the first settlers. 

Ail, riviere-a-l'. On the St. Lawrence shore, town of Syden- 
ham; like R. Echalotte; from the garUc or wild onion 
that abounds in the valley. 

Albany Mountains. An old name of the Notre Dame or 
Shickshock mountains. It appears on Jeffery's map of 
1860 but may date back to the time of Sir William 
Alexander. 

Alezay or Alezai. Cartier's name for Deadman's L 

Alright. One of the Magdalen Islands. Sailor's term. Not 
older than the Coffin patent. Either this or Grindstone 
I. was called Saunders I. by Bayfield or the Coffins. 

Amherst. Island in the Magdalen group. Gen. William (not 
Jeffrey) Amherst — a name given by the Coffin patentees. 
The old French name is Havre Aubert and this is the 
post office name to-day. Aubert was commissioner for 
the islands at an early day and the "Havre" has refer- 
ence to the interior lagoon or Basin which is open for 
small vessels. 

Ann, Cape. On a map published with Hugh Gray's Letters 
from Canada, 1809. Same as C. Despair. 

Arcouil Point. "After Arcouil, a Jersey fisherman who 
made several voyages to this coast" (White). 

Arnold's Bluff, Gasp6. Rev. Mr. Arnold was one of the 
early Church of England missionaries. He married 
Miss O'Hara (see Cape O'Hara) (F. J. Richmond). 

Aubert. See Amherst. 

Baie-au-Plaisance. See Pleasant Bay. 
273 



274 GLOSSARY OF GASP£ PLACE NAMES 

Baillargeon, town. "After Mgr. Charles Francis Baillar- 
geon, third R. C. Bishop of Quebec, 1850-67 " (White). 

Bakachois. General term applied to any water at a river 
mouth impoimded behind a coastal sand bar. Village 
at the head of Malbay (B.-de-Mal-Baie). "East Indian 
French" (White). Barre-cheois, the part protected from 
the tumble of the waves (Ferland). Barre-echuee, the 
waters protected by a bar. 

Barre, Cap. A cape on the St. Lawrence a few miles above 
Fox river; also at the north beach at Perc^. "From the 
rock of the cape which is varicolored or 'barred'" 
(White). This does not apply well to the first named 
and only in part to the last. Cape Barr6 at Perc6 is a 
mass of gray rocks but the chffs beyond, at the "Blow- 
hole" and Red Peak are banded in shales of red, orange 
and gray. "Named after a settler" (R. Tardif). 

Basque Harbor. A name dating to the 1600's when the 
Basques were in possession. 

Basse, Pointe. Magdalen Is. The steamer-landing at Al- 
right — not on chart. (Pointe Basque?) 

Beaupils. Cove (Anse-5,-Beaufils) between Perc6 and Cape 
Cove. "After a French nobleman, Bonfils, who spent 
a summer at Perc6" (White). Certainly a hospitable 
way to treat a tourist. 

Bird Rocks. Magdalen Is. The Rocks are separated into 
North or Great Bird (7 acres) and the Little Birds, two 
in number. 

Blanc, Cap, anglice "Whitehead"; south of Perc6. The cape 
is made by a mass of light gray rocks standing vertical 
between masses of red. 

Blanche, Isle. See Grindstone. 

Blanchet, town. "After Rev. Francis Norbert Blanchet, a 
priest of Quebec who went as a missionary to British 
Columbia and afterwards became Archbishop of Oregon" 
(White). 



GLOSSx\RY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 275 

Blondel, Anse. Cove near Newport village. " Named after 
a settler" (R. Tardif). 

Blowhole, Sea cliff on the Murailles of Perc6. 

Bois Brule. Brook and district on south shore of Gasp6 
Bay. Descriptive; the burned woods are still a visible 
feature. 

Bon Ami, Cape. On the east side of the Forillon. "After a 
settler from the island of Jersey*' (White). "The set- 
tler was a Guernseyman at Grande Greve" (A. M. 
Dolbel). 

Bona venture, Island. "Mgr. Boss6 suggests that it may 
be after the vessel in which the Sieur de la Court-Pr6- 
Ra\dllon made a walrus hunt in 1591. It seems more 
probable that it conmiemorates some fortunate occur- 
rence that Champlain has omitted to note. Or after the 
Marquis de Bonaventure" (White). Hardly the first, 
as Pre-Ravillon's hunt was in the Magdalens. It is a 
very ancient name and a natural expression for a happy 
landfall. 

Breche-a-Manon. Town of Perc6, near Little River. 
"Named after a settler. Also written Breche-a-Menon " 
(R. Tardif). 

Brilliant, cove {Anse-a-Brillant; sometimes Briand). South 
shore of Gasp6 Bay. "After the Brillant family of 
Quebec, who settled here" (White). "Romantic people 
say that the rising sun shines into L'Anse-a-Brillant with 
almost miraculous brilliancy; slangy ones that the Bril- 
lant family came here from Quebec" (Wood). 

Brion. One of the Magdalen Islands. Apphed by Cartier, 
1534, to the island now bearing it, it was often used by 
early explorers for the whole group. It was given in 
honor of Philipe Chabot, Sieur de Brion. 

Bryon. Alternative form of Brion, which see. 

Byron. Same as Brion, and a British distortion of that name. 

Cabanes, L'Anse-Aux-. See Cabin Cove. 



276 GLOSSARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 

Cabin Cove. On the south shore of Amherst, Magdalen Is. 
Has reference to Micmac lodges there at an early day. 

Canards, cove. (Anse-a-Canards). Town of Pabos. Duck 
Cove. 

Cannes-des-Roches. On the Perc^ cliffs or Murailles, facing 
Malbay. " I have thought this referred to the quantity 
of stone, but am told it was named for birds which fre- 
quented the rocks and were thus termed by the French" 
(R. Tardif). Cannes-des-roches = Rock ducks. 

Canon, Cap-au, Perc6. May have reference to a cannon 
placed on this headland at Perce but more likely from the 
booming of the waves againct it. 

Canot, cove (Anse-a-Canot). Town of Chlorydorme. De- 
scriptive; Canoe Cove. 

Cap, Anse-du-, village, cove. Cape Cove, town of Perc^. 

Cap-des-Rosiers, town, village, cape. Cape of the roses; 
from the abundance of wild roses here in Champlain's 
time, from which the name dates. 

Carnaval, cove. (Anse-Carnaval), to\\Ti of Pabos. "Re- 
ferring to local good times on the cove" (R. Tardif). 

Castor, river, town of Tourelle. Beaver river. 

Chaloupe, Pointe-a-la-, cape. From its resemblance to a 
sail-boat or chaloupe. 

Chasse, point (Pointe-a-Chasse), town of Duchesnay. Point 
of the Hunt (family name?). 

Chat, cape (Cap-Chat), town, village, capes (Cap-Chat and 
Petit Cap-Chat), cove. "So called because the cape 
seen in profile resembles a cat (chat) " (Wliite). "Cham- 
plain ayant acquitt6 sa reconnaissance envers son bien- 
faiteur le commandeur de Chatte en donnant son nom k 
un cap de la Nouvelle France, etc." (P. G. Roy). "Cap 
Chat was named for de Chastes or de la Chate, Cham- 
plain's Dieppe patron who brought him out on his first 
trip, and without prejudice to its original significance it 
stands on the map by Francis de Creux, dated 1660, as 



GLOSSARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 277 

' Promontorium Felis' (Clarke). It is "Cape Cat" on 
Jeffrey's map, 1760. 

Chien-Blanc, cliff, south shore of Gasp6 Bay. The long gray 
cliff face with low rounded top and lying between red 
rocks suggested a "white dog" to the French fishermen. 

Chlorydorme, town, village, cape. According to White the 
preferred spelling is Cloridorme, though the fonner is in 
vogue. "The grantee, Chas. Morin, requested that the 
seigniory be named 'Cloridon'" (White). 

Christie, town. "After Robt. Christie (1788-1856), his- 
torian, member of the House of Assembly for Gasp6 
(1827-29); in 1829 expelled on the ground of having mis- 
advised the government; was again returned and again 
expelled and deprived of his seat until the union; again 
elected and remained a member until 1854" (White). 

Claude, river (Riviere- a-Claude), town of Mont Louis. 
"From the numbers of kingfishers found along this 
stream" (White). 

Coffin. One of the Magdalens. Named for the proprietor, 
Sir Isaac Coffin. 

CoRBEAU, Cape, town of Chlorydorme. Having the shape of 
a crow or abounding in crows. 

Corner-of-the-Beach, village. Lies at the beginning of the 
Malbay beach, back of Perce IMountains. 

Corps Mort. Same as Deadman's I. 

Cousins, cove (Anse-aux-Cousins), on the south shore, Nor'- 
west Arm, Gasp6 Bay. This locality was settled by the 
prolific Coffin family, U. E. Loyalists, who intermarried 
freely till all later generations are related (F. J. Rich- 
mond). 

Dartmouth, river (The "Nor'west Arm" of Gasp6 Bay). 
After Dartmouth, England. 

Dauphin, Cape. See North Cape. 

Deadman's I. A small rock platform, seven miles west of 
Amherst, Magdalen Is. Same as Alezay. 



278 GLOSSARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 

DeBeaujeu, town. "After Hon. George Saveuse de Beaujeu, 
seignior of Soulangcs and member of the Legislative 
Council; d. 1865" (White). 

Demoiselle. A hill on Amlierst, Magdalen Is. Takes its 
name from its symmetrical shape which the French 
thought resembled a maiden's breast, in which respect 
it is like all the volcanic-gypsum hills on Grindstone, 
Alright and Entry Islands. 

DeNoue, town. "After Rev. Father Anne-de-Nou6, Jesuit 
missionary in New France, 1646" (White). 

Despair, Cape, town of Perc6. Commonly supposed to be 
an anghcized form of Cap d'Espoir, exactly reversing the 
original meaning; but see d'Espoir. 

D'Espoir, Cap. Cape of Good Hope. On the map of de 
Creux, 1660, it is Promontorium spei. Rarely Dcsespoir 
on some early maps. D'Espoir is the usual form on 
French maps, but on a map of 1546 in the Hispanic 
Museum in New York, it is C. despera. I am informed 
by Mr. Stevenson, secretary of the Hispanic Society, 
that the map is by Gastaldi, an Italian map engraver of 
high repute. 

Douglas, town. See following. 

DouGLASTOwN, village, town of Douglas. White says this 
name is that of Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Douglas, but 
Le Moine and others say that it was named after the 
Scotch surveyor who laid out this village of houseless 
streets. 

DucHESNAY, town. "After Hon. Antoine Juchereau Duches- 
nay, M. L. C. previous to Confederation, Senator, 1867, 
until his death in 1871" (White). 

EcHALOTTE, river (Riviere- a-l'echalotte), town of Syden- 
ham. "After a kind of wild onion formerly found here" 
(White). 

Entry. An island of the Magdalen group; I. de I'Entr^e. 
It guards the southeastern portal of the group. 



GLOSSARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 279 

Epinette Blanche, river, town of Chlorydorme. White 
Pine river. 

EsPOiR, Cap d'. See D'Espoir. 

Etang-du-nord. Village on Grindstone I., Magdalen group. 
Pronounced by the English, Tantanour. The pond is 
the north pond of Basque Harbor. 

Fame Point, marine station. English corruption of the French 
"faim," hunger. 

Ferr:6e, river (Riviere Ferree), town of Taschereau. Refer- 
ring to the iron in the water shown by the ochreous stains 
on the bottom. 

Flottant, brook (Ruisseau-de-Flottant), town of Taschereau. 
May refer to the sluggish character of the stream, but 
probably is the name of an early settler. 

FoRiLLON, town of Cap-des-Rosiers. Name originally ap- 
plied to the narrow peninsula from Grande Greve to 
Cape Gasp6 or Shiphead. So used by Lescarbot. Prob- 
ably derived from "forer," to drill, as the peninsula has 
the shape of a drill. The term Forillon was in quite 
general use in early days and on old maps. Denys mis- 
applied it to Plateau Island on the south side of Gaspe 
Bay. Frequently the name was attached to the end of 
the cliff at Cape Gasp6 where formerly stood an obelisk 
of rock cut off by the sea and which was thought to sug- 
gest a "drill." White says: "From the French 'farillon' 
or 'pharillon,' meaning the pan in which the fishermen 
make a light to attract the fish of night." 

FoRTiN, town. "After Pierre Fortin, M. P. P. from Gasp6, 
1867; Commissioner of Crown Lands, Quebec, 1873-74" 
(White). 

FouRCHE, river (Riviere-a-la-fourche). Descriptive, refers to 
the fork in the stream. 

Fox, town. "Probably after Chas. James Fox, 1749-1806"; 
possibly "suggested by Fox river which traverses the 
township" (White). 



280 GLOS-SARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 

Fox River, village, river; Riviere-aux-r^nards. A transla- 
tion. 

Fregate, Points, town of Chlorydorme. Some forgotten 
shipwreck. 

Friday's Bluff. St. John river. 

FuGERE, cove (Anse Fugere), town of Fox. "Possibly from 
the rank growth of ferns (fougere). Or a corruption of 
the name of a former resident, Fisher" (White). 

Galt, town. "After Sir A. T. Gait (1817-93) one of the 
'fathers of the Confederation'" (White). 

Gaspe, peninsula, county, towns (north and south), bay 
village. "Gasp6," says F. Pacifique, "is palpably a 
Micmac word: Gespeg, meaning 'end' or 'extremity.' 
There is another word, two indeed, which have the same 
name in composition and have the same meaning: Ges- 
pogoitg, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and Gespesaocg, Cape 
Breton" (Rouillard, Noms geographiques) . 

Grand Entry. Magdalen Is. This passage between Alright 
and Coffin islands seems to have been in use from the 
days of the Basques and Bretons. It was, I believe, the 
harbor called by Leigh, 1591, Halobolina, and was men- 
tioned by Cartier. 

Grand Etang, town, cove. A "great pond" or lake lies near 
the center of this seigniory. 

Grande Carriere, ruisseau-de-la. Same as Grande Cav6e. 

Grande Cavee, ruisseau-de-la-, towns of Fox and Cap-des- 
Rosiers. The stream makes a "deep gully." 

Grande Coupe, town of DeNoue; also town of Perc6, facing 
Malbay. Refers to the sheer cliff wall. 

Grande Gr^ve, village, town of Cap-des-Rosiers. The 
"great beach"; it is a small beach but great in compari- 
son with the other beaches on the Forillon. 

Grande Riviere, town, village, river. Descriptive. 

Grande Vallee-des-Monts, town and village (Grande 
Valine). A "grand valley" in the Shickshock Mountains. 



GLOSSARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 281 

Gridley, I\It. The little triangle of land at Amherst wharf, 
Magdalen Is. Gridley was an American who established 
the first lobster fishing here about 1763. 

Griffon, cove (Anse-au-Griffon), town of Cap-des-Rosiers. 
Originally Anse-au-gris-fond, cove with a gray bottom. 
Corrupted by the EngUsh to Griffon or Griffin Cove 
and now accepted on some French maps as Anse-au- 
Griffon. 

Grindstone. Member of the Magdalen group. Takes its 
name from the coarse white sandstone which forms the 
principal headland. Cape Meule. 

Gros-Cap-aux-Os, cape; Cap-aux-Os, village, north shore 
of Gaspe Bay. Cape of the bones, doubtless referring to 
large bones, probably of the whale, found on the shore. 
Written by Bayfield, Logan and others Cape Oiseau and 
on modern English maps (Century Atlas) Cape Ozo. 
To-day vulgo, Caboozo. 

Grosse Isle. The Great Island of the Magdalens or the 
Great Magdalen of a few English writers. One of the 
smallest of the group but connected by vast sands with 
all the other land at the north. 

Haldimand, town. "After Gen. Sir Frederick Haldimand, 
Governor General of Canada 1778-84, who tried to settle 
his nephews here in 1784" (White). 

Harbor Basque. See Basque Harbor. 

Havre-aux-Basques. See Basque Harbor. 

Havre-Aubert. See Amherst. 

HopiTAL, Cap-au-. See Hospital. 

Hospital. Cape on Grindstone I., Magdalen group. The 
origin is lost both to the French and English, but the 
name naturally suggests a wreck and rescue. 

House. Harbor on the Magdalen Islands between Grind- 
stone and Alright. An ancient term referring to early 
settlement, probably the first on the islands. 

Ilot, cove (Anse-a-1'ilot) ; town of Pabos. Descriptive. 



282 GLOSSARY OF GASPE PLACE NAMES 

Indian Cove (Anse-a-sauvage) ; north shore of Gasp^ Bay. 

From a Micmac family located here during the early 

white settlement. 
Irishtown (Perce), hamlet. Inhabitants largely Irish, some 

of them of loyalist stock but mostly later comers. 
Islets, Ruisseau-des; town of Newport. Descriptive. 
Jardin, Anse. Near Newport. "This place was formerly 

called Jardin-du-Naveau as it is one of the few spots 

there fit to grow turnips" (R. Tardif). 
Jaune, Pointe; near south point of Gaspe Bay. A strip of 

yellowish rocks runs down to the shore at this point. 
Jean, cove (Anse-a-Jeah), town of Christie. What Jean is 

not kno^Ti. 
Jeanne Echourie, river; town of Fox. "The water being 

very shallow at low tide supposed to be from the word 

eschori^e or stranded" (CO. Carrel). 
Jersey Cove, cove and village (Anse Jersey); town of Cap- 

des-Rosiers. Jerseymen first settled here. 
JoLi, Mt.; Perc6. Pretty in itself and in the view from its 

summit. 
Ladysteps brook; entering the Dartmouth river in rapids 

caused by a series of small step-like ledges. 
Laforce, town. "After Major Pierre Laforce, who served 

in the war of 1812" (White). 
Larocque, town. "After Rt. Rev. Paul Larocque, Bishop of 

Sherbrooke" (White). 
Les Araynes. The northern part of the Magdalen Islands. 

Cartier speaks, in the narrative of his second voyage, of 

crossing over from Brion to the sands, "les ara3'-nes," 

meaning the sands of Grosse Isle and eastward. The 

name appears on early charts in the alternative forms 

here given and apphed to all the group except Brion and 

Alezay: /. des Arenas; I. des Arenes; I. aux-Sablons; 

I. aux-Sabloens. There is another name of the same 

extent, /. Duoron, the meaning of which is not known-. 



GLOSSARY OF GASP-E PLACE NAMES 283 

Leslie Cove. Named for William Leslie, early pioneer of 
the lobster business, and still there after 40 years' resi- 
dence. This is the post-office name of the eastern part 
of Grindstone L, Magdalen group. 

Little Gaspe (Petit Gaspe), post village; on north shore of 
Gaspe Bay. 

Little River (Petite Riviere); tovm of Grand River; river, 
village. In contrast to Grand River, a few miles away. 

Lobster Cove, Gaspe Basin. From abundance of lobsters. 

Louise, cove (Anse-a-Louise) ; town of Cap-des-Rosiers. At 
an early but uncertain date, the French frigate La Louise 
was wrecked here. 

Loup, Anse-au-; town of Grand River. Wolf Cove. 

Loups-Maeins, Anse; village, cove; south shore of Gasp6 
Bay. Anglice, Seal Cove. 

LouTRE, Riviere-la. Otter river. 

Madeleine. Island group named for Madeleine Doublet, 
wife of Frangois Doublet, 1663. 

Magdalen 



, See Madeleine. 
Magdalene ) 

Magdeleine (Cap-de-la-Magdeleine), town, village, river. 

"Seigniory, Champlain; the land for an Indian mission 

founded here by the Jesuits was donated by de la Fert6, 

abbe de-la-Magdeleine, after whom it was named" 

(White). 
Maison, Harbor. See House. 
Maisons, Havre-aux-. See House. 
Mal-Baie, bay, town, village. Molue-baie or Baie-des- 

molues, Breton for morues (cod fish) ; Codfish Bay. 
Manche-d'Ep^e, brook (Ruisseau-du-Manche-d'Ep6e),town 

of Taschereau. Perhaps from the curves in its course, 

like a sword hilt. 
Maquereau, Pointe; town of Newport. Mackerel potin. 

"Tradition says that a vessel of that name was wrecked 

on the point" (White). 



284 GLOSSARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 

■i 

Mahgaulx, Isle-aux-. See Margots. 

Margots, Isle-aux-. Cartier's name for the Bird Rocks. 

Marsouis, river (Riviere Marsouis), town of Duchesnay. 
Porpoises are common enough as far up the St. Lawrence 
as this, and the fishing of them was inaugurated by Vitr^ 
as far back as 1690. 

Marte, river (Riviere-a-la-Marte), town of Christie. The 
martin is still common on the headwaters of this stream. 

Mate, river (Riviere-du-gros-Mate), town of Taschereau. 

Maudlin. Broad French and vulgar English. (See Made- 
leine.) 

Meules, Isle-aux. See Grindstone. 

Mississippi, brook; town of Baillargeon. An anticlimax — a 
small stream named for a big one. 

Mont Louis, town, village, river, mountain. "The moun- 
tains forming the boundary of this valley were named in 
honor of Louis XIV, reigning sovereign of France when 
the first concession was made" (White). 

Morin, brook (Ruisseau-a-Morin) ; town of Cap-des-Rosiers. 
"After a settler in the vicinity" (White). 

MuRAiLLES. The cliffs or walls at Perc6, facing Malbay. 

Naufrage, cove (Anse-naufrage), town of Duchesnay. Some 
forgotten shipwreck. 

Newport, town, village. Adapted English name. 

North Cape. This is the Cap-au-Daupliin of Cartier, a name 
still in use among the French. 

Notre Dame Mountains. Champlain's name for the moun- 
tains which lie back of the south shore. See Shickshock 
and Albany mountains. 

O'Hara, Cape. From Felix O'Hara, patentee of the lands 
where Gasp6 village now lies. 

OiSEAux, Isle-aux-. One of the early names for the Bird 
Rocks. 

Old Harry Head. On Coffin I., one of the Magdalens. 
Probably of like date. 



GLOSSARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 285 

Os, Gros-Cap-aux-. See Gros-Cap-aux-Os. 

Ours, cape (Cap-a-l'Ours), town of DeNou6. Gape of the 
bear. 

Pabos, town, river, village (Grand Pabos, Little Pabos). "A 
well known Basque word applied to a place formerly 
much frequented by the fishermen of that nation" 
(White, quoted). 

Patate, river (Riviere patate), town of Tourelle. Potato 
river. 

Pele, Cap; town of Grand River. "A barren spot" (R. Tar- 
dif.) 

Peninsula, peninsula, village; Gaspe Bay. Descriptive. See 
Penouil. 

Penouil; Gasp6 Bay. Same as Peninsula; a Basque word 
applied to the sand spit (Peninsula point) and still in 
use among the French. 

Perc^:, shire-town, village, mountains, island (Rock). The 
name of the Pierced Rock, L'isle Percee, has extended to 
the adjoining mainland. In early writings Rocher Perc6 
and Isle Percee were applied only to the rock. The 
present use however in application to the shoreland is 
ancient and dates back at least to the early part of the 
17th century. 

Perry Cove (Anse-^-Perry), town of Cap-Chat. Name of 
some English settler? 

Pierre Meuliere. See Grindstone. 

Plateau, Island; off south point of Gasp^ Bay. Flat Island; 
sometimes so written. Corrupted by Bayfield and later 
English writers to Plato Island. On some English maps 
written Hat Island, due to careless transcription of the 
word Flat. It is a low island with broad fiat rock surface. 

Pleasant Bay. The broad bay on the east coast of Amherst, 
Magdalen Is., a deadly anchorage in an easterly gale. 

Pleureuse, cove (Anse-pleureuse), town of Taschereau. 
White also cites Cap-pleureur, Anse and Riviere-Pleur- 



286 GLOSSARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 

ence. Of the former he says: "from the httle streams 
which spring from several points on its surface giving it 
the appearance of 'weeping'"; of the latter: "from 
fancied 'crying' heard by the fishermen; probably the 
wind or cries of wild animals on the forest." 

Point Navarre, settlement on Nor'west arm of Gasp6 Bay. 
Some of the early settlers maj' have come from Navarre. 
French coins found in Gasp6 often bear the arms of 
Navarre-et-Bearn. Vulgo P. Navoo or Naveau, in Cana- 
dian French, a turnip. 

Ramea. See Ramies. 

Rameau, town. "After E. Rameau-de-St.-Pere, a French 
writer friendly to Canadians and Acadians" (White). 

Ramies. Champlain apphed the name Ram^e-Brion to the 
Magdalen Island group, Ra,mee having reference to the 
way the islands are strung together by bars. The name 
was in use before Champlain 's time, as it appears in 
Fisher's narrative of 1591 and Drake's, 1593. "Called 
by the Britons of S. Malo the Isle of Ram^e." 

Ramies. See Ramees. 

Ramsay, Fort; York side of Gasp6 Basin. 

Rebours, brook (Ruisseau-a-Rebours), town of Duchesnay. 
"Probably from the 'turning back' of the water at an 
'elbow' near the source" (White). 

Red Cape. Grindstone I., Magdalen group. Its blood-red 
sand-stones. 

Red Head, cape (Cap Rouge), on south shore of Gasp^ Bay. 
The rocks are red. 

Renards, Riviere-aux-, village, river, town of Fox; Fox 
River; which see. 

RosEviLLE, post village; on north side of Nor'west Arm, 
Gasp^ Bay. Named after a settler. Now known as 
Rosebridge. 

RosiERS. See Cap-des-Rosiers. 

Rouge, cap (Cap Rouge). From the red rocks. 



I 



GLOSSARY OF GASPE PLACE NAMES 287 

RouGEAU, Riviere-a-mon ; town of Newport. 

Sailor Cove. Sailor unknown. 

Sainte-Adelaide. See Pabos. 

Sainte-Anne, mountain, at Perc6 (Ste-Anne-de Perc6). 
Same as Table-a-rolante. 

Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, town, village (Ste-Anne), cape 
and river; town of Cap-Chat. "After Ste-Anne-de-la- 
Pocatiere, from which parish the first settler came, and 
des Monts from the Notre Dame momitains in which 
the river rises" (White). Roy writes: " Sainte-Anne-de- 
Monts" and says Champlain named the river for M. de 
Monts. Rouillard regards this a mere legend and says 
that when Champlain desired to commemorate one of 
his friends or protectors he mentioned the fact in his 
Relations or inscribed it on his maps, but of this name he 
made no record. 

Saint-Anges, Cap. Bonaventure Island. 

Sandy Beach. Long sand bar extending into Gasp6 Bay 
from the south shore; the neutral line between the waters 
of the York river and those of Gaspe Bay. Here, in the 
outer or inner bay Jacques Cartier is supposed to have 
made his landing, 1534, and on this bar the Prince of 
Wales (Edward VII) was run aground in 1860, his first 
stop in America. 

Sauvage, Anse-au-. See Indian Cove. 

Seal Cove (Anse-loups-marins) ; on south shore of Gasp6 
Bay. From the abundance of seals. 

Seal Rock, post village, reef. This is a submerged and 
dangerous rock lying off the north shore of Gasp6 Bay, 
exposed only at very low neap tides when it suggests a 
seal. 

Seche, Pointe; town of Chlorydorme. Probably descriptive. 

Serpent, Cap; town of Fox. 

Serpentine Mt.; town of Sydenham South. It is largely 
composed of serpentine rocks. 



288 GLOSSARY OF GASPE PLACE NAMES 

Shag. Island, one of the Magdalens. This is a bird roost and 
a shag is a cormorant. 

Shickshock Mountains. The Micmac word from which it 
is derived means rocky mountains. These are the moun- 
tains to which Champlain appHed the name Notre Dame 
and probably Alexander's cartographers the name Al- 
bany. In the southern part of Gaspesia, where the 
ranges of very different rocks approach the coast at 
Carleton and Maria, the inhabitants commonly call those 
ranges the Shickshocks, but the use of that name has 
neither historic nor geographic accuracy. An alterna- 
tive and far more acceptable term is Carleton Moun- 
tains. 

Shiphead. The more southerly of the two headlands at the 

end of the Forillon peninsula; the other is Cape Gasp^. 

Shiphead resembles the lofty prow of a vessel standing 

high above the water. On its triangular flat sunmiit 

stands the lighthouse. 

Sou'wEST Cape ) c, it7 i. t» • ^ 
c , T, [See West Pomt. 

Sou WEST Point \ 

St. Alban Mountain; on the Forillon peninsula. "After 

Alban Bond, the first settler" (White). 
St. George's Cove. North shore of Gasp6 Bay. 
St. John River. 
St. Marjorique (or S. M. du-Nord-Ouest), parish, on the 

Nor'west arm of Gasp6 Bay. "After Marjorique Bolduc, 

cur6 of Douglastown when parish was formed" (White). 
St. Pierre, cape, village. At the south end of Gasp6 Bay. 

An appropriate name for a rocky cape. 
Sydenham (North and South), townships. "After Chas. 

Poulett Thompson Baron Sydenham (1793-1841), 

Governor-General of Canada, 1839-41" (White). 
Table- a-Rolante; sometimes Table-a-Roland. Mt. Ste 

Anne, Perc^. An old name referring to the. undulating 

table top of the mountain. 



GLOSSARY OF GASPfi PLACE NAMES 289 

Tar Point. Small cape on south shore of Gaspe Bay where 

bitumen has oozed from the rocks. 
Taschereau, town. "After His Eminence Elz^ar Alexandre 

Taschereau (1820-98), Archbishop of Quebec, 1871; 

Cardinal, 1886" (White). 
TouRELLE, town, river, cape. "From two rocks on the shore 

about three miles apart, which at a distance present the 

appearance of towers" (White). 
Trois Ruisseaus. Three brooks. 
Trou-au-Chat; Cats den, a ravine or coul6 at the north end 

of Perc6 village. 
Trou-aux-M ARGOTS. Cliff s on the northeast side of Bona- 
venture Island where the gannets nest more abundantly than 

anywhere else on the Atlantic coast. 
Trou, Cap le. Grindstone I., Magdalen group. Stands on 

the hydrographic chart but does not seem to be known 

to the residents. 
Vache-Marine, Riviere; town of Newport. Walrus river. 
Valleau, cove (Anse-a-Valleau) ; town of Fox. "Some 

authorities say it should be written 'Vallon' (a little 

valley); although this name would be descriptive Roy 

considers it improbable" (White). "From the deep 

valley, i. e., Anse-au- Valine " (C. O. Carrel). 
Vall:ee, river, town of Christie. 
Verte, Pointe; town of Malbaie. Descriptive. 
West Point. On Amherst, Magdalen Is. 
Whitehead, Cape. Fr. Cap Blanc, which see. 
York, town. After York, England. 



THE LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHT SIGNALS OF GASPE 
COUNTY 



THEIR SITUATION, DATES OF ERECTION AND CHARACTERISTICS * 



Chat River 
Cape Chat 



Ste. Anne-des-Monts 
RiviJire-a-la-Martre 



Mont Louis 
Cape Magdalen 

Grande Valli^e 
Chlorydorme 
Fame Point 

Fox River 



2 continuous red lights on 
wharf. 1909. 

On cape 120 feet above high 
water. Flashing white light 
1871; rebuilt 1909. 

Continuous red hght. 1905. 

4 white flashes every 30 sec- 
onds; 130 feet high; 1876, 
rebuilt 1906. 

2 continuous red lanterns. 
1905. 

3 white flashes every 30 sec- 
onds; elevation 146 feet. 
1871. 

2 continuous red lanterns; 

1905. 
2 continuous red lanterns; 

1905. 
Double white flash at unequal 

intervals; elevation 190 

feet; 1880, rebuilt 1907. 
2 continuous red lanterns; 

1905. 



* Compiled from the reports of the Dominion Department 
of Marine and Fisheries. 

290 



LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHT SIGNALS 291 

Griffon Cove 2 continuous red lanterns; 

1905. 

Gap-des-Rosiers Bright white Ught for 15 sec- 

onds, suddenly eclipsed; 
elevation 136 feet; 1858. 

Cape Gasp6 (Shiphead) White, revolving, 3 flashes 15 

seconds apart, with 30 sec- 
onds eclipse. Elevation 355. 
(?) feet; 1873; rebuilt 1892. 

Gasp^ — O'Hara Point Wharf Red lantern. 

Sandy Beach Point White, visible 6 seconds, 

eclipsed 4 seconds; light 
ship from 1871 to 1904. 

Plateau Island Revolving red Hght, 30 sec- 

onds; elevation 77 feet. 



Barachois 
Perce Wharf 
White-head 

Cape d'Espoir 



Grand River Wharf 
Grand River 
Grand Pabos 
Entry Island 



Amherst Island 

Etang-du-Nord 
Grand Entry 



Red lantern. 

Red lantern. 

Continuous white light, eleva- 
tion 149 feet. 1874. 

Revolving white light, every 
30 seconds; elevation 90 
feet. 1874. 

Continuous white light. 

Continuous red lantern. 

Red lantern. 

On hill near S. E. point. White 
hght, visible 4 sec, eclipsed 
4 sec; elevation about 250 
feet. 1874, removed 1905, 
again removed 1911. 

South point. Alternating red 
and white. 1871. 

Revolving white Ught. 1874. 

Continuous red light. 



292 LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHT SIGNALS 

Brion Island Near West point. Flashing 

white light. Elevation 126 

feet. 1905. 
Bird Rocks White, visible 15 sec, eclipsed 

5 sec. Elevation 152 feet. 

1870, rebuUt 1887. 



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"TF 






